Li Zhesi falls from doping

Li Zhesi became known when she won 50m free at City Games 2007 with a time 25.40s, as a 12 years old. In 2008, she was a semi-finalist in Beijing Olympics followed by being part of 4x100m medley winning team at Rome Worlds in 2009. In the same year, she also swam the 2nd fastest women 50m free in Asia, 24.56s at National Games, only behind Asian record holder, Le Jingyi at 24.51 set at Rome Worlds in 1994 during the golden flower era. She is also Asian Games champion in 2010 but she seems to be unable to improve her time in 50m free after the tech suit was banned. In 2012 National championships in April, she was even out of top 3 in the 50m free and then the doping news broke later after the championships. The news confirmed her absence of Olympics due to her doping announced by CSA but unconfirmed if she can compete in 2013 National Games (she definitely will not be legitimate to swim in National Games if she is banned for at least 2 years since she will still be under the banned period when National Games starts).  It was only a few days ago that her ban was really confirmed by FINA.

From swimnews.com, Craig Lord claimed her coach is Feng Zhen, who is also a coach of Li Xuanxu, Olympic bronze medalist. It is strange that all the news in the past up to 2011 I read about Li Zhesi, her coach is Yuan Yue, who also trains Wang Junyao (who swims sprint freestyle and butterfly). On the other hand, Feng's pupils were/are all either long distance freestylers or IMers including Li Xuanxu, Yang Fan, You Meihong, Yu Xin, Huang Chaosheng and Yang Zhixian. Among them, Li Xuanxu and Yang Zhixian are both London Olympians in women's/men's 400m IM. Currently, Li Xuanxu is still training well and just a week ago, she swam 8:29 for 800m free at a small meet in Australia. If Feng is banned, Li Xuanxu's training must be affected in some way since in China, coach-swimmer relationship can be like parents and children that swimmers see their coach more than their parents by a whole lot.

But in the end, there is a person called Wang Shun who becomes the banned coach. Is he a scape goat by the way? I think he is not the IM swimmer also named Wang Shun.

Li Zhesi is from Liaoning Province, a province that produces a lot of fine athletes in athletics and swimming and at the same time, creates a lot of headlines in doping. The most stunning achievement from Liaoning province is the world records of middle long distance running Ma's army produced at Chinese National Games in 1993 that are still untouchable until now. Ma's army is a female middle long distance running team coached by Ma Junren. In 1992, Ma's army runner Qu Yunxia became the 1st Chinese to win a medal (Bronze) in middle distance (women 1500m) at Olympics. In recent interview, Qu still believed that she could win the race in Barcelona and attribute her loss to her inexperience at big meet. Nevertheless, she became 3000m world champion in 1993 Stturgart Worlds with her 2 teammates sweeping silver and bronze. Her teammate, Wang Junxia and Liu Dong also won 10000m and 1500m, respectively. Then Wang became the leading role as she broke world records in 10k and 3k at Chinese National Games. For 10000m, she became the 1st woman to break the magic 30-min mark. Qu, at the same meet, broke 1500m world record. In 1995, Ma's army disbanded and only Wang Junxia succeeded at Atlanta Olympics in 1996 after she overcame a lot of resistance with her coach. She also pre-maturely retired after Olympics as a 23-years-old. Ma's army once revived in 1997 National Games breaking women's 5000m world record and aimed high at Sydney Olympics in 2000. To show Ma's determination at Olympics, he unprecedentedly sent his runner overseas to run at IAAF meets. It was in vain when the doping news broke. In the end, only one of his runners, Li Ji passed the doping test and was selected to the Olympics (but how & why?) and finished 6th in women's 10000m.

For Liaoning swimmers, Lu Bin is the most famous in the early 90s. She was finalist (8th) in women's 200m free at Barcelona Olympics in 1992. She won 200m IM at Worlds in 1994 when her Lianning teammate, Dai Guohong took 400m IM. Lu then broke women's 200m IM world record at Asian Games but was later tested positve with another 6 athletes. Although Dai never had a postive result, she retired immaturely the next year. After Lu , the biggest swimming star from Liaoning is Chen Yan, who broke women's 400m IM world record at National Games in 1997 and became 400m free/400m IM World champion at Perth Worlds in 1998, which was (and still is) another doping dismal for China. She was also a 2-time Olympian (1996 and 2000) and swam for University of Hawaii until 2003. People always confuse her with another Chen Yan, who was banned for doping in 1998 before Asian Games. The latter Chen was one of the top national backstrokers in the same period of time from Jiangsu province and a Olympian in 1996 swimming 100m back.

Another random piece: Liu Zige, women's 200m butterfly Olympic champion, is also from Liaoning province but never represented for the province. She represents for Shanghai from very young age.

Now, it is Li Zhesi, a 18-year-old swimmer...

For my next blogs, I will go a little deeper in some history of Chinese Athletics and swimming based on my memory