Summer Olympics 2012 London

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Mingjuan Wang wins Olympic gold for China in 48kg weightlifting

Mingjuan Wang won weightlifting gold for China in the 48kg section with a score of 205kg at the ExCel Centre.

The four-time world champion was a controversial pick for London 2012 after she was selected ahead of Tian Yuan, who won gold at China's National Women's Weightlifting Championships.

She repaid the faith and led after the snatch event to beat Japan's Hiromi Miyake (197kg) into second.

North Korean Chun Hwa Ryang (192kg) took bronze with her final lift.

Wang, 26, missed the last two Olympics through injury and led Miyake by 4kg after the snatch.

She then lifted 110kg in the clean and jerk to secure the gold medal, before going on to successfully lift 114kg.

In taking silver Miyake is the third member of her family to win an Olympic medal. Her father took bronze in the 1968 Games, while her uncle Yoshinobu Miyake won gold at the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.

 

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Sun Yang became the first Chinese male swimmer to earn gold as he won the 400m freestyle with an Olympic record.

Sun overhauled South Korean rival Park Tae-hwan, who had been reinstated into the final after being disqualified for a false start in his morning heat.

Defending champion Park had led for most of the race before Sun overtook him just after the final turn and went on to win.

Peter Vanderkaay was third, with Great Britain's David Carry, 30, in seventh.

Carry is the oldest member of Team GB's swimming squad and said: "What a feeling. I can't believe it.

"A year ago I set myself the target of reaching the Olympic final. There have been some rocky patches. To have this awesome support behind me was fantastic."

Sun was on world record pace in the final 50 metres and, although he narrowly missed out on that mark, he did break Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe's Olympic record.

 

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Gold Italy, Silver Italy and Bronze Italy.

London 2012: Elisa Di Francisca claims Olympic fencing gold

Italy's Elisa Di Francisca won the individual foil Olympic gold at the ExCel Centre after defeating compatriot Arianna Errigo in extra time.

The pair were level at 11-11 before Di Francisca scored the vital point early into the extra minute to seal victory.

Earlier three-time Olympic champion Valentina Vezzali needed extra time to beat Korean Nam Hyun-hee for bronze.

It meant Italy completed a clean sweep in the fencing, winning all three medals on Saturday.

Vezzali was the reigning Olympic champion and was hoping to become the first woman to win four consecutive individual gold medals, but was beaten by compatriot Errigo.

Britain's first three fencers in action were unable to make it into the last 16.

Polish-born Natalia Sheppard and Londoner Sophie Troiano had to fight each other in the first round, but after winning a tense clash 12-9 Sheppard was then crushed 15-5 by France's world number six Corinne Maitrejean.

Anna Bentley lost in sudden death to Canadian Monica Peterson.

 

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LONDON (AP) -- Slow and steady sometimes really does win. At least in judo.

Brazilian Sarah Menezes got off to a shaky start at the Olympics on Saturday, squeaking through her preliminary rounds by the smallest possible margin. But by the end of her final fight of the women's 48-kilogram category, Menezes became the first Brazilian woman to win an Olympic judo gold. Pitted against defending champion Alina Dumitru in a cagey final, Menezes often kept her guard up like a boxer avoiding jabs.

In the last minutes of the match, she managed to throw Dumitru twice for a convincing win.

"I'm exceedingly happy," Menezes said afterwards. "I hoped and prayed for this medal and I got it at 22."

In the men's 60-kilogram division, Russian Arsen Galstyan surprised spectators and opponents alike when he took the gold.

Galstyan defeated the category's two favorites to win the medal: top-ranked Uzbeki fighter Rishod Sobirov in the semifinal, and Japanese judoka Hiroaki Hiroaka in the final.

It took less than a minute for Galstyan, 23, to score a match-ending ippon over Hiroaka. It was the first Olympic medal for the Russian, who came third at the world championships. The bronze medals were won by Sobirov and Felipe Kitadai of Brazil.

It was the first gold medal for Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union. "Russia has waited (for this) for a long time," Galstyan said. "I feel very happy I was able to win it."

The women's bronze medals went to Hungarian Eva Csernoviczki and Charline van Snick of Belgium. For Csernoviczki, the medal came despite being strangled into unconsciousness in the fourth round.

"I still can't believe I made it," she said. "I am happy that for the first time, I could beat the world No. 1," she said, referring to her win over top-ranked Tomoko Fukumi in the bronze medal match.

For Fukumi and her team, it was a disappointing day for the nation that invented judo and aspires only to gold.

Hiroaka had looked in top form on Saturday and was frequently the aggressor in his matches - until he got thrown by Galstyan. "I'm not satisfied with the color of my medal, but I did the best I could," he said.

Still, mere judo skills didn't explain everyone's success on Saturday.

Before each match, Brazilian Kitadai touched the tatami before touching his judo uniform. He said he always thinks of the five rings when he dreams of the Olympics. "I touch the rings (on the mat) as if to touch my dream with my hand," he said. "It isn't just technique that wins judo."

 

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Life's a beach at Horse Guards Parade where beach volleyball has taken Britain by storm... and even Benny Hill turned up

It was bikinis, beer and Benny Hill at Horse Guards Parade yesterday where the beach volleyball kicked off and is already proving to be the Olympics hottest ticket.

As the sun beat down, beautifully built competitors cast the venue's historic architectural sights in to the shade as they digged, spiked and bumped the ball across the sandpit in the heart of the capital.

Teams from China and Russia, Czech Republic and Poland, Australia and the U.S., Switzerland and Greece were all competing in the preliminary matches on the 2012 Games' opening day.
But the vast majority of the 15,000 spectators had little interest in the nationalities of those taking part. They had come to see scantily dressed athletes getting hot and sweaty.

Organisers had done their best to encourage a sea-side postcard atmosphere to the proceedings, with the Benny Hill theme tune played during every break in play and an over-excited announcer doing his best to stir up an already electrified audience.
And for those moments between matches where the crowd had no athletes to admire, cheerleaders in Fifties style swept onto the court for provocative dance routines that sent the crowd as wild as any rally.

Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh made the perfect start to their bid for a third successive Olympic beach volleyball gold medal with victory over Australia in the day's concluding game.
The American duo, champions at Athens in 2004 and Beijing four years ago, were made to work all they way for the win 21-18 21-19 against the Australian duo of 2000 gold medal winner Natalie Cook and Tamsin Hinchley.

Unfortunately for those watching, in a game that got under way at 11pm and with temperatures around the 13 degrees Centigrade mark, both teams opted to don warmer clothing for the match.

The Australians selected legging and long-sleeved tops, while the Americans were happy just cover up their top halves.

After the reigning champions edged a close first set, the second proved even more enthralling, with May-Treanor and Walsh trailing 13-9 at one stage. A run of four straight points brought them back level, before the game ebbed and flowed the rest of the way.

Eventually the American pair came through on their first match-point chance, winning a brilliant rally which stood as a fitting conclusion to an exciting opening day.

The day began with an upset in the very first match as second seeds Xue Chen and Zhang Xi slipped to defeat against Russia in Pool B.

Xue and Zhang, bronze medallists in Beijing four years ago, are among the favourites for gold this time but made a poor start to their Olympic quest as they fell to a 18-21 21-14 16-14 loss to Anastasia Vasina and Anna Vozakova.
China never looked at their best throughout the contest, and only just got across the line in a 20-minute opening set that could have gone either way.

The 21st-ranked Russians responded well in the next, taking the set comfortably, before the third - deciding sets are first to 15, rather than 21 - went to the wire.

China looked home and dry when they ran up two match points at 14-12, but some great defensive play saw the Russians pull back level, before they forced match point for themselves at 15-14, which was converted when Vasina's spike cannoned out of bounds off the helpless Zhang.

Six-time world champions Larissa Franca and Juliana Silva of Brazil demolished Natacha Rigobert and Elodie Li Yuk Lo of Mauritius 21-5 21-10 in Pool A, while the Czech Republic's Marketa Slukova and Kristyna Kolocova rallied to beat Austrian sisters Doris and Stefanie Schwaiger 10-21 21-13 15-13 in Pool C.

Beach party vibe: Cheerleaders' dance performances were greeted with cheers as enthusiastic as any those granted any of the sporting prowess on display

Good effort: Chen Xue of China dips to return the ball during the match, where they eventually lost to the Russian side

 

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The retard who design the london cauldron did not design it to be moved with flame on. They have to switch off to move a few metres. Now they need 7 kids and 1 man to light one cauldron, they never think things through.
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London Olympics cauldron put out and relit in stadium

The cauldron is burning in its new position at the south end of the stadium

The Olympic cauldron has been extinguished and relit after being moved into the position occupied by the opening ceremony bell in the stadium.

The flame was taken from the cauldron at 21:00 BST on Sunday and placed in a miner's lantern while the structure was relocated from the field of play.

It was relit at 07:50 BST on Monday, after the move to the south end of the stadium was complete.

The cauldron is made up of 204 steel pipes and copper petals.

In Beijing and at other Games, the cauldron has been positioned on the stadium roof to maximise its visibility.

Live footage of the London flame will be projected on the stadium's big rooftop screens during the first week of the Games.

Thomas Heatherwick, who designed the cauldron, said: "There is the precedent of the 1948 Games of the cauldron set within the stadium, to one side with the spectators and with the technology we now have that didn't exist in 1948, it can be shared with everyone in the Olympic Park with screens.

"We felt that sharing it with the screens reinforced the intimacy within it.

"If it had been a huge beacon lifted up in the air it would have had to be bigger and would have somehow not met the brief that we discussed with Danny Boyle of making something that was rooted in where the people are."

The cauldron was re-lit by Austin Playfoot, who carried the London Olympic torch in 1948 and 2012.

He said: "When I ran with the Olympic flame in Guildford I never thought I would get this close to the cauldron, it brought me to tears when it lit up.

"It will be an incredible inspiration to the competing athletes here at the heart of the Olympic Park in the stadium."

The athletics events begin in the stadium on Friday.

At the end of the Games, it will be dismantled and one petal given to each of the competing nations and territories.

 

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Poms asked, did china cheat again?
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How DID China's girl torpedo go so fast? Clare Balding's astonishment and questions over the 400m triumph by teenage sensation

As Chinese swimming prodigy Ye Shiwen completed an extraordinary performance to smash the world record, the surprise in Clare Balding’s voice was clear.
At the age of 16, Miss Ye had just stunned spectators at the Olympic pool by swimming the final freestyle 50m of the 400m individual medley in 28.93seconds.
Not only was that faster than the 27-year-old American Ryan Lochte had managed minutes earlier to win his gold in the men’s version of the same event, it was part of an overall time a whole five seconds quicker than her previous best.
The result prompted BBC presenter Miss Balding to ask former British Olympian Mark Foster, in the studio as a pundit: ‘How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?’
Chinese swimming has previously been tainted by drug scandals – another 16-year-old world champion tested positive for doping last month – but Foster sought to play down any suggestion of cheating.
He said: ‘It was a five-second best time and it was the way she did it as well. Bearing in mind she is 16 years of age, and when you are young you do some big best times… it can be done.’
Miss Ye was back in the pool this morning, comfortably winning her heat in the 200m individual medley.
Her time was 2:08.90, more than two seconds off Ariana Kukors' world record of 2:06.15.
But Miss Balding’s question provoked a storm among BBC viewers on Twitter, with many praising her for daring to even hint at the possibility of cheating, but many criticising her for tainting the Chinese swimmer’s achievement and some even calling for her sacking.

Last night the BBC defended Miss Balding’s comments, insisting: ‘The Chinese swimmer had just knocked five seconds off her personal best to break a world record; in her role as a presenter it is Clare’s job to ask the experts (in this case Mark Foster), how she managed to do it. There was absolutely no implication of doping.’


The success of China, which won more gold medals in the pool on the first day than it did in the whole of its own Olympics in Beijing four years ago – prompted further questions, with some fearing China’s sudden resurgence is a throwback to days of the 1994 Rome world championships, when its drug-powered women swept to 13 of the 16 available golds.
In June Chinese state media said 16-year-old Li Zhesi, part of the country’s winning team at the 2009 World Championships, had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, EPO, which boosts the body’s oxygen supplies.
The Chinese, who point out that their athletes are regularly tested, have gone to great lengths to ensure there is no chance of any of their athletes failing dope tests in London and are said to have even imposed a ban on them eating the food prepared at the Olympic Village.
Miss Ye began her illustrious career when she was plucked from a primary school classroom. Teachers in China are trained to look out for pupils with promising physical attributes and noticing the seven-year-old had unusually large hands and long legs, her teacher alerted the local government sports officials.

She left home to begin an intensive training regime at one of China’s 3,000-plus state-run and funded ‘medal factories’, designed to transform talented youths into ruthless sporting machines.

Aged just 12, she was selected for the national team. She took her trainers by surprise at the World Championships in Shanghai last year, producing a devastating freestyle triumph in the 200m individual medley.
Her trajectory caught Communist Party propagandists by surprise, but they have since given her the kind of profile usually afforded to more established stars.
‘Her career has been rocket-like. She’s one of the other great discoveries following the 2008 Beijing Olympics,’ the Communist Party’s newspaper of choice, the People’s Daily, declared.

 

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The return of the Chinese whispers: 400m marvel Ye sets tongues wagging

When Patrick Miley prepared his daughter Hannah for this Olympics, he focused much of his attention on the American who beat her to last year's world title.
He knew everything about Elizabeth Beisel, even down to how many strokes she takes in each of the four disciplines that make up the 400 metres individual medley.
But what the Mileys did not see coming, what nobody saw coming, was the 16-year-old Chinese girl who smashed a world record that was set in the now banned bodysuits and beat Beisel by nearly three seconds.

In winning the 200m individual medley at last year's World Championships at the age of 15, the powerfully built Ye Shiwen had already made something of an impact on the global stage.
But she was fifth in the longer event, almost seven seconds down on the stunning performance at the London Aquatics Centre on Saturday night.
Most extraordinary of all, she swam the last 50m of her race quicker than Ryan Lochte had to win gold in the corresponding men's race.
Ye covered that final length in 28.83sec, compared to Lochte's time of 29.10.
Her last 100m was not too shabby either: 58.68 compared to Lochte's 58.65.
Lochte, one of the finest swimmers the world has ever seen, was asked about Ye after encountering the first Chinese man to win an Olympic gold - the winner of the 400m freestyle, Sun Yang - in the 200m freestyle on Sunday morning.
'If she was there with me she might have beaten me,' said Lochte with a smile. 'We were talking about it at dinner.'

Miley and her father had been preparing for the challenge of Elizabeth Beisel
Everyone is talking about it: about the fact that Ye's time would have won the men's event at the 1972 Olympics; about the fact that she could have gone even faster had she not failed to complete an underwater stroke on her final breaststroke.
It has the world of swimming whispering the same concerns that have too often arisen around Chinese sport.
Although Ye has never tested positive for any banned substances, the fact that, since the Nineties, so many Chinese swimmers have been caught using performance-enhancing drugs has inevitably raised the issue, whether justified or not.
Only last month, it emerged that 16-year-old Li Zhesi had tested positive for erythropoietin, the blood doping drug that has been favoured by so many cyclists, claiming the lives of some due to cardiac arrest.
The Chinese did not consider Li, a double world champion in the 4x100m medley relay, too young to be put on such a programme and one now has to wonder how extensive a programme that is.

Last week a retired Chinese Olympic doctor claimed Chinese Olympians were subjected to a state-sponsored doping regime modelled on eastern Europe.
'It was rampant in the 1980s,' Xue Yinxian told Fairfax Media in her Beijing home. 'One had to accept it.'
The Chinese women went from nothing to four golds at the 1992 World Championships and the 1992 Olympics, following that with 12 golds at the 1994 worlds. At the 1994 Asian Games, 11 Chinese women swimmers tested positive for dihydrotestosterone.
At the 1998 World Championships in Perth, four swimmers tested positive and another, Yuan Yuan, was caught carrying human growth hormone vials in her luggage.

Mediocrity followed the scandals, and at their home Games four years ago China won just one gold and six swimming medals in total.
But one of their main contenders, Ouyang Kunpeng, tested positive a few months before the Games and was one of seven Chinese swimmers to be exposed as a drug cheat in 2008.
Worryingly for her rivals, Ye says she can go even faster. 'There's much room for improvement,' she said. 'It's true for breaststroke I am lagging behind but I think my freestyle result is also not that good.'
Lochte would disagree and so would Miley. After finishing fifth in a race that saw another Chinese swimmer take bronze behind Ye and Beisel, Miley felt the need to apologise for letting people down and burst into tears.
She needn't have. She and her father just came up against something they never saw coming. 'The problem is we don't see them all year,' said Miley.

 

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The Olympic Cauldron consists of 204 copper petal-like mini-cauldrons, each representing one of the participating nations. Each copper petal was brought into the stadium by each team as part of the athletes’ procession. After the procession, each petal was then attached to long pipes, forming in a ring at the centre of the stadium.

Unlike other recent Olympic host cities, which traditionally have displayed the flame atop the main stadium, the London cauldron will remain inside the stadium in keeping with the 1948 London Olympic games.

"We wanted to keep it sitting with the spectators," Heatherwick said, adding that the public outside the stadium will be able to view it on video screens scattered throughout Olympic Park.

When the flame is extinguished, the cauldron will be disassembled and each country will be provided with a scorched petal to carry home.

"Everyone has a piece in the end," Heatherwick said.


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each have engrave name of the country, WTF want a scorched piece of copper pedal, recycle the copper to get a fiver. Nuts.

 

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The retard who design the london cauldron did not design it to be moved with flame on. They have to switch off to move a few metres. Now they need 7 kids and 1 man to light one cauldron, they never think things through.
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At the end of the Games, it will be dismantled and one petal given to each of the competing nations and territories.

It is a compromise, considered that this is a TOP SECRET part of the stage show.

Only 5 people know of how this cauldron thing is going to be lit and there is only one rehearsal at 3-4am in the morning when the stadium is quiet and no helicopter flying.

BUT FOR ONCE, the cauldron is the STAR and not the person lighting the cauldron.

It is part of the stage show, that signify UNITY and every country get a copper petal home. There will be no cauldron left after the Closing Ceremony.

The world's first 204 flames forming an Olympic flame. Very -out -of -the -box creative

 

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China want to stage a musical based on the London Olympic farm.
A British director was called up in the middle of the night to see if he is interested in producing one ...

 

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LONDON—Up until last weekend, outspoken Australian Stephanie Rice was the best women’s medley swimmer in history.

Suddenly, the new best is out in front of her. Way out in front. And Rice sounds like she’s still trying to figure out who she is.

“I just wanted to get in there in the semis tonight,” Rice said after a slow morning heat. “I knew I was in there against Ye Shiwen. Or however you pronounce her name.”

Ye sports a pair of linebacker shoulders on a tiny 16-year-old frame. After the heats she tootsy-footied through the media throng carrying a small pair of UGGs boots. She was wide-eyed at all the attention.

Ye came into these games a glittering but still unpolished jewel — a powerful freestyler still trying to master the more complicated strokes in the individual medley.

Suddenly, she is the breakout star of these games. Given her low profile outside the sport and the chequered history of China’s swimmers, that’s got people talking. They’re not accusing yet, but they are inserting an audible, arched eyebrow into all comments.

Ye made headlines Saturday when she completed the final 50 metres of the 400 IM — her weaker event — in a blistering 28.93.

“Out of control,” Rice said of the feat, and then lowered to a comic tone. “I didn’t see it. I was way behind.”

Ryan Lochte, the gold medallist from the U.S. team, completed that same distance in that same discipline in 29.1 seconds. This may now be the only power event in world sport in which a woman is the best, period. A girl, really.

Asked if Lochte was taking any stick for his swim, teammate Michael Phelps said: “She outswam me, too. We were all pretty shocked.”

If the legend of the U.S. dream team — the real one — dies here in London, a 140-pound girl will have been the one to drive home the sword.

Ye herself was blasé.

“I didn’t feel at my best. The water was too cold.”

The water is 29C.

Ye shattered Rice’s 400-metre IM world record by more than a second — a seismic shift. It was the first women’s swimming world record broken since the banning of full-body, high-tech swimsuits.

Questions? Everyone has a few.

Asked about doping, Rice first hemmed, but refused to haw.

“I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to get into that at all …” — and then, without pausing, she sort of got into it — “ … I mean, 58 (seconds over the final 100 metres) is an insanely fast swim.”

Ye’s take: “There’s absolutely no problem with doping. The Chinese team has always had a firm policy of anti-doping.”

Despite the sophistry involved in the use of the word ‘policy’, that’s demonstrably untrue. In the 90s, more than 40 Chinese swimmers were caught cheating, inevitably meaning others went undetected. Earlier this year, another 16-year-old Chinese, Li Zhesi, was caught blood doping and tossed from the Olympic squad.

Ye didn’t do herself any favours when she credited her rise to “good, scientific-based training.”

As a child, Ye was apparently tapped for swimming by a teacher who noticed her unusually large hands. China has become famed for plucking very young children on the basis of physical traits and pushing them into sports that can make use of them, rather than leave it to the crapshoot of a kid’s own interests.

Whatever the secret, she took the bookies by surprise as well.

Before the Games started, Ye was on 3/1 odds to win the 200 IM. After dominating Monday morning’s heats, William Hill reduced that price to a virtual lock — 1/20. Those are the shortest odds on any swimmer at the Olympics. The final will go off Tuesday night.

It’s churlish to heap a pile of global suspicion onto the shoulders of a Grade 11 student. Right up until it turns out to be founded in some fact. Then it turns into a frenzy of indignation. That’s a more predictable pattern than the sun rising.

Given her age, her history and her stunning times, Ye’s ascendance understandably prompts a great deal of brow folding.

John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, told Britain’s the Guardian the performance was unbelievable.

“We want to be very careful about calling it doping,” Leonard said. “The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, ‘unbelievable’, history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100 metres was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of 400-metre individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta.”

For now, let’s let the doping experts do their jobs. Until they prove otherwise, we can do ours — enjoying the incredible capacity of the human race to meet and surpass every physical barrier placed in front of it.

 

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Ye Shiwen's world record Olympic swim: brilliant, or too good to be true?

Ye Shiwen of China with her gold medal after winning the women's 400m individual medley. Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA
It was not Ye Shiwen's winning time that aroused John Leonard's suspicion, or even her age. The 16-year-old Ye swam the final of the 400m individual medley (IM) in a new world record of 4min 28.43sec, seven seconds faster than she had gone in the 2011 World Championship final. Leonard, an authority on swimming who has been executive director of the World Association of Swimming Coaches since 1989, believes that was a plausible, if difficult, improvement to make in 12 months. No, what got Leonard was the ease and speed with which Ye swam the last 100m. After 300m of butterfly, back and breaststroke, Ye was eight-tenths of a second behind the USA's Elizabeth Beisel. But 100m of freestyle later, Ye was almost three seconds ahead of her. One of the most remarkable facts of these Games is that Ye's time for her final length was quicker than that of Ryan Lochte, who won the men's IM in the second-fastest time in history.

For Leonard it brought back "awful memories" of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta when Ireland's Michelle Smith, now De Bruin, won three gold medals in the pool only to be banned for doping offences two years later. Smith faced down direct accusations from her US rival Janet Evans at those Olympics. In 2012 Ye has been confronted with questions by the press, but until Leonard spoke out no one inside the sport was willing to put their doubts on the record. "Unbelievable" was the word many people, including the 2009 world champion in the 200m medley, Ariana Kukors, used to describe Ye's swim. Whether they were punctuating it with an exclamation mark or a question mark was left to the journalists to interpret.

Ye did not come from nowhere. She won the 200m IM title at the 2011 World Championships, when she was just 15. "I know she is a good freestyle swimmer," said Australia's Stephanie Rice, who won gold in both medley events at the Beijing Olympics. "I was next to her at Worlds, in the 200m IM last year and she came home over the top of me in that freestyle leg, and I am not exactly bad myself."

For the wider public, and perhaps many people in the sport as well, it is a matter of debate and personal opinion as to whether Ye deserves the benefit of the doubt or not. There is no evidence to condemn her other than her own brilliance, and it is hard to judge a 16-year-old girl on the basis of that alone. Instinctively, many fans will want to believe in her talent. Others, scarred by years of doping revelations across a range of sports, would say that view is naive. Ye could simply be the shining light of the first products of the heavy investment the Chinese made in the sport before the Beijing Olympics. Their squad here includes eight girls aged 17 or under.

But Leonard, who has decades worth of knowledge and experience and has been lauded for his firm anti-doping stance in the past, believes it is certainly a question that needs to be asked. These are not the sour grapes of a sore rival, but the concerns of an expert who has enormous integrity on anti-doping within the swimming community. He made a point of praising Ye's teammate Sun Yang, who won three freestyle gold medals in the 2011 World Championships, and has already won the 400m freestyle title here in London. Sun's curve of improvement, Leonard reckons, "is well within the trajectory of the sport".

"If you look at the woman in question, and her biomechanics in the heats, she has a steady, moderately slow, six-beat kick," Leonard said, referring to the number of kicks Ye takes with each arm stroke. "All of a sudden in the Olympic final she turned it up to an eight-beat kick, which any coach will tell you is very difficult to maintain for 25m, much less 100m."

Ross Tucker, a sport scientist who based a large part of his PhD on pacing strategies in sport – or how athletes reserve enough energy to finish an event strongly – has also voiced his discomfort, while stressing that nothing had been proven against Ye. "Don't shy away from the question just because it's politically incorrect," Tucker writes his blog the Science of Sport. "Look where that got sport before."

Tucker points out that, on average, female medley swimmers finish the 400m IM in a freestyle time that is between "18% and 23% slower" than that of a top 100m freestyler. But Ye's leg was about 10% off the times set by the best 100m freestyle swimmers. "The conclusion that I would draw from this," Tucker writes, "is that her 100m freestyle leg is disproportionately fast not only by comparison to Lochte, but also to her peers, and to the best 100m freestyle swimmers." That, Tucker says, is too big a gap. "Based on everything we know about performance and pacing. I suspect that Shiwen would probably be two or more seconds faster if she went out harder and pushed to the point of fatigue."

It would make more sense, Tucker suggests, for Ye to swim faster over the first three legs and trade that improvement off for a slight loss of time in the final 100m. As Leonard said, "to swim three other splits at the rate that she did, which was quite ordinary for elite competition, and then unleash a historic anomaly, it is just not right".

"Her first 300m was an extremely conservative effort," concluded Tucker. "The simple question is: 'Under what circumstances does a female have the capacity to finish a race as fast as a male?'" It is the same question that is being asked by Leonard, only in a different way. "If it is a truly clean swim it is probably one of the most magnificent swims in history," Leonard said. "But at this point, I would call it unbelievable." This time, there was no doubt how he meant it.

 

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Ye Shiwen: Too fast for her own good?
The story people at the Aquatic Centre are talking about

In an Olympic swim meet that has so far been most notable for who hasn’t been topping the podium—perennial champions like Michael Phelps of the U.S., Australia’s Stephanie Rice, and Kotsuke Kitajima of Japan, who all suddenly look old and slow—there is only one story people are talking about. Sixteen-year-old Ye Shiwen of China, who has not only emerged as the fastest woman, but is piling up times that put most of the men to shame.

In the 400m Individual Medley finals on Saturday night, Ye powered to gold in 4:28.43, shaving more than a second off the previous world record, and shattering her own personal best by a full five seconds. More astounding still, sitting second to American Elizabeth Beisel as the race entered its final 100 metres, Ye turned on the jets and left the reigning world champion flailing for the silver. The 16-year-old’s splits for the freestyle leg—29.25 for the first 50m, then 28.93 for the last length of the pool—were not only way faster than any of her competitors, they were faster than anyone in the men’s 400m IM. Ryan Lochte of the U.S., considered the best all-around swimmer on the planet at the moment, swam his last leg 0.17 seconds slower on the way to a gold.

Yet Ye didn’t seem that excited by her crushing victory. “There is much room for improvement,” she told reporters. ”It’s true for breaststroke I am lagging behind, but I think my freestyle result is also not that good. Usually I’m very bad at turning. This is one of my worst basic skills, but turning is a very important skill, therefore I was practicing my turns before the competition.”

In the heats for the 200m IM this morning—an event she won at the world championships in Shanghai last year—Ye looked awfully impressive, qualifying first for the semis with a time of 2:08.90. Ahead by almost a full body length during the breaststroke, she again pulled away over the final freestyle leg to best Kristy Coventry of Zimbabwe, who won a silver in Beijing, by more than 1.5 seconds. It’s almost like Ye has a propeller.

This dominance is of course raising questions. After all, the Chinese swim program has a long history of doping, with 40 positive tests during the 1990s alone, and another 16-year-old, Li Zhesi, being caught for the blood-booster EPO this past spring. Ye has never failed a test, and Chinese officials have expressed annoyance that the issue is even being raised. She is, they say, a product of a program that now identifies talent at an extremely young age and nutures it along. In Ye’s case, it was her kindergarten teacher who guided her toward the pool after noticing she had extremely large hands for a five-year-old.

The rising Chinese power in the pool will be an issue for Canada as the swim meet continues this week. Ryan Cochrane’s toughest competition in the 1500m Freestyle is Sun Yang, the 20-year-old who beat him out for gold at the world championships in Shanghai. There, Sun shaved 0.42 off a world record that had stood since 2001, and no one even came close to touching in Beijing when swimmers were still allowed to wear those full-body shark suits.

Whatever the Chinese are doing, it’s working.

 

[singveld]

Champion Chinese teenager Ye Shiwen's final lap a match for the men

CHINESE teenager Ye Shiwen has unleashed a withering final burst to claim Olympic gold in the women's 400m medley, in a world record time that will raise eyebrows in London.

The 16-year-old overwhelmed American world champion Elizabeth Beisel to win the final in four minutes 28.43 seconds,capping a glittering night for China in the pool following Sun Yang's breakthrough victory in the men's 400m freestyle.

Ye put in a storming final freestyle leg to shatter the previous record of 4:29.45, set by Australia's Stephanie Rice en route to gold at the Beijing Games four years ago.

A disappointed Rice trailed in sixth in 4:35.49.

So supercharged was Ye's finish that she stormed under the world record on the back of a 28.93sec final lap to leave her rivals in her wake.

“I thought at the 200 metres that the race was lost,” Ye said. “But then on the breaststroke I realised I was in the top two or three and I was confident I could win on the last leg.

“I've been working on my butterfly and backstroke since last year's world championships and have closed the gap, while freestyle is my best stroke. I dreamed of winning the gold medal, but I never ever expected to break a world record, I'm overwhelmed.”

Beisel finished with silver in 4:31.27 with Ye's teammate Li Xuanxu taking the bronze in 4:32.91.

Ye's world record swim is certain to cause comment, especially when it is seen in tandem with Li's bronze medal, and Sun Yang's victory in the 400m freestyle lowering Ian Thorpe's Olympic record in the process.

The memory of China's drug-fuelled domination of world swimming are still too raw for this sudden resurgence of the People's Republic to sit easily with swimming lovers.

Yet it would have to be said that the signs are different this time. For starters, the success is spread over both sexes. In the past, it was only the Chinese women, whose bodies respond more dramatically to testosterone, who scooped the pool, while the men were duds, the exact profile of the disgraced East German program of the 1970's and 1980's.

Still, there was something decidedly mannish about the way Ye finished off her demolition of the women's individual medley field.

Her final lap of 28.93sec was .17sec faster than Ryan Lochte's victory lap on his way to his astonishing win in the men's 400m individual medley. And their final 100m were eerily close. Lochte swam his in 58.65sec, Ye in 58.68sec.

To suggest that Ye's back-end times are unheard-of sells them short. They are unthought-of.

Lochte had just put to the sword the greatest swimmer in Olympic history, Michael Phelps, yet here was a Chinese woman effectively matching him stroke for stroke at the death. That's going to stir some interesting conversations in a number of places, not least at the headquarters of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

And to think that Lochte only missed Phelps's world record for the event by 1.34sec with his 4min.05.18sec swim - not a lot when it is considered he finished nearly six seconds ahead of his nearest rival, Thiago Pereira with Japan's Kosuke Hagino taking the bronze.

Phelps, having only just scraped into the final, swam the race out in Kieren Country, lane eight. But with the legendary Australian 1500m freestyle champion looking on from the stands, Phelps never looked like emulating Perkins' 1996 Atlanta heroics.

He battled hard and bravely but in the end faded to finish fourth in 4:09.28sec, the first time he had missed a medal in an Olympic race since he placed fifth as a 15-year-old in Sydney in the 200m butterfly.

“Just a crappy swim,” lamented Phelps and who could argue with him.

Had Phelps won - a result that excited the imagination for only about 150m - he would have become the first male swimmer in history and only the third behind Dawn Fraser and Hungarian backstroke Kristina Egerzeki to win the same event three times at the Olympics.

His failure, however, now opens the door to Japanese 100m breaststroker Kosuke Katajima to beat him to that honour in tonight's final. Still, the Japanese great appears to be struggling as much as every other defending champion here. He could manage to qualify for the final only as the sixth fastest swimmer in 59.69sec. South African Cameron van der Burgh led the charge with an Olympic record 58.83sec but hot on his heels are two Australians, world record holder Brenton Rickard (59.50sec) and Christian Sprenger (59.61sec), both registering their fastest times ever in a textile suit.

Their stunning semi-final swims have breathed new life into Australians men's medley relay hopes. A lot now hinges on how much inspiration butterflyer Chris Wright draws from watching his girlfriend Melanie Schlanger's anchor leg heroics in Australia's gold medal relay victory last night.

 

[singveld]

Incredulity greets Chinese teen Ye Shiwen's 400IM finish

WHEN Ryan Lochte, who won the 400 metres individual medley for the United States on Saturday, was asked about his time down the last length being beaten by a 16-year-old Chinese schoolgirl, he said: "Yeah, we were talking about that at dinner. It's pretty impressive. She's fast. If she was there with me, she might have beat me."

A wave of incredulity had swept through the media seats even before Ye Shiwen, 16, had turned for the last time on her way to gold in the 400 metres individual medley at the Aquatics Centre.

A body length behind at the end of breaststroke, Ye, who took up swimming at 6 after a kindergarten teacher had spotted her big hands and directed her parents to the pool, powered past Elizabeth Beisel, of the United States, on freestyle, like a speedboat trouncing a tug.

Take any world-class 400 metres medley title race among women in recent years, including Saturday's battle, and the average homecoming 100 metres freestyle split is about 1min 2.00sec.

Lochte, Beisel's training partner at the University of Florida, where as part of the training programme they shove tractor tyres uphill while dragging chains behind them and sprint "Stadiums" eight times (800 steps) to test their fitness, came home to gold in the men's 400m medley in 58.65, his last 50metres in 29.10.


Ye was timed at 58.68 for her closing 100 metres, last length 28.93, for a world record of 4:28.43, the first world record to fall to a woman since the ban on booster bodysuits in 2010.

Beisel's time, 4:31.27 would have been the best by a woman in a textile suit. Ye's team-mate, Li Xuanxu, was next in 4:32.91.

Among those locked out by sizeable margins were the former Olympic and world champions, including Australia's Stephanie Rice and Britain's Hannah Miley, the European and Commonwealth champion.

Ye, who was also inside the finishing speed of Michael Phelps, skipped out of the water on her way to interviews, doping control and a warmdown in the side pool, as though she had just come from taking a dip in a hotel leisure pool.

"No way - what the hell was that!" shouted an American reporter.

That was the sight of history: since women first arrived in the Olympic pool, none had ever swum the last length (or any other part) of a race faster than the winning man in the equivalent event.

By yesterday morning, Ye was the talk of the Aquatics Centre and swimming blogs the world over - for all the wrong reasons. Among the flood of comments was: "If WADA does not get a handle on this. Its gonna become like a FREAK SHOW!".

Six weeks ago, a 16-year-old former team-mate of Ye's, Li Zhesi, tested positive for erythropoeitin (EPO), the blood-booster. The case was announced by the China Anti-Doping Agency (Chinada), which cited "an out-of-competition test carried out on March 31". No suspension has yet been announced nor was FINA, the international federation, aware of the case when asked about it yesterday.

But for the ban, Li would most surely have been here. She turned 13 the day before her home Games got under way in Beijing in 2008. A year later, at 14, she became a world champion as a member of the China women's 4x100 metres medley quartet.

Put Li together with Ye's freakish performance against the backdrop of a doping-soaked 1990s, during which Chinese swimmers produced more than 40 positive steroid tests, and it is clear why questions are being asked.

The scandal came to a head at the 1998 world championships in Perth, after Yuan Yuan, a young breaststroke swimmer, was caught with 13 vials of human growth hormone in her kitbag at Sydney airport.

By the end of the championships, several swimmers and their coaches, including one of the head coaches, Zhao Ming, had received bans of four years to life.

Those days have not been forgotten. On the eve of the Games in London, John Fahey, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), spoke in cautionary tones when asked by Xinhua, the national news agency of China, to explain critical comments he had made.

He said he had "found enormous efforts were made by China to adopt the [WADA] Code and practice properly ... I have not suggested that China is going to revert to the sort of record they had a decade or so ago".

He said: "I believe the commitment is still on and it's very good."

Asked to comment on Ye, Gregg Troy, the US head men's coach and personal trainer to Lochte and Beisel, said: "You guys can research that for yourselves. It's probably the fastest split by a woman ever." And some.

Ye's off-the-chart speed at the end of an Olympic 400 metres medley final that made world-class athletes look dead in the water has put Chinese swimming back in the headlines, on the blogs and in the chatrooms of the world in anything but a positive way.

 

[singveld]

China want to stage a musical based on the London Olympic farm.
A British director was called up in the middle of the night to see if he is interested in producing one ...

Two goats, 70 sheep, 12 horses, ten chickens, ten ducks, nine geese, three sheepdogs and three cows that inhabit the show's Olympic farmyard

All heading to the olympic village canteen. YUM YUM.

 

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The world's first 204 flames forming an Olympic flame. Very -out -of -the -box creative

It may be out of the box creativity, but it is a stupid idea anyway. No one can see it from outside the stadium, they have to extinguish the flame everytime they move it. I call it EPIC FAIL.


look at this

Amidst the camera-flashing pomp and cliché costumed circumstance in the Parade of Nations, the group without a country was the highlight. Instead of marching and snapping pictures, three Independent Olympic Athletes danced, whooped and grinned to the audiences, their infectious joy winning them hearts worldwide.

The entrance is trending all over social media, with many cheering on the group’s antics. Seeing as how much of the rest of the opening ceremony wasn’t taking itself too seriously, the Independent Olympic Athletes fit right into the light-hearted partycentric atmosphere.

The trio of nationless Olympians are all from Netherlands Antilles, a collection of Caribbean islands that were dissolved in 2010. The former country was known for its proficiency in sprinting, mainly because their athlete came in second to Usain Bolt in the Beijing 200m final, but was disqualified for stepping on the boundary of his lane.

Each athlete will compete in different events – Liemarvin Bonevacia for the 400m, Philipine van Aanholt for Women’s Laser Radial (Sailing), and Reginald De Windt for Judo.

The fourth absent member of the Independent Olympic Athletes is Guor Marial, a Marathon runner from the newly formed Southern Sudan. In 1992, he took refuge in the United States from the Sudanese Civil War. In an interview with Huffington Post, Guor said.


---------

so who is going to take the scrap copper metal back for the Independent Olympic athletes ? Is there a hunger games fight to determine who bring it home?

 

[singveld]

Ye Shiwen's world record Olympic swim 'disturbing', says top US coach



China has become embroiled in the first doping controversy of the London Games after one of the world's most respected coaches described the swimming prodigy Ye Shiwen's gold medal performance as "unbelievable" and "disturbing".

The American John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, said the 16-year-old's performance was "suspicious" and said it brought back "a lot of awful memories" of the Irish swimmer Michelle Smith's race in the same event at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Smith, now Michelle de Bruin, was banned for four years in 1998 after testing positive for an anabolic steroid.

Ye stunned world swimming on Saturday by winning gold in the 400m individual medley in a world-record time. It was her final 100m of freestyle, in which she recorded a split time of 58.68sec, that aroused Leonard's suspicion. Over the last 50m she was quicker than the American Ryan Lochte, who won the men's 400m individual medley in the second-fastest time in history .

"We want to be very careful about calling it doping," said Leonard, who is also the executive director of the USA Swimming Coaches Association.

"The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, 'unbelievable', history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of the 400m individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta."

Leonard is the first major figure in the swimming world to go public with suspicions over Ye's performance. London 2012 organisers and the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) have insisted that anyone cheating at the Games would be caught, with a record 6,250 tests being carried out.

About half of the 10,500 athletes, including all medal winners, will be tested for 240 banned substances. But Wada has also repeatedly raised concerns about athletes who may be successfully doping out of competition, drawing a distinction between them and "dopey dopers" who are caught during a major championships.

Stephanie Rice, the Australian who won gold in both women's medley events in Beijing in 2008, described Ye's performance as "insanely fast". Ariana Kukors, the 2009 world 200m medley champion from the US, has said it was "amazing" and "unbelievable".

Leonard, who said Ye "looks like superwoman" added: "Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping."

His comments are liable to further increase tensions between China – which has poured huge resources into its sporting programmes in recent years and topped the US in the medal table for the first time in Beijing four years ago – and the Americans.

Ye was more than seven seconds faster in the Olympic 400m individual medley final than she had been in the World Championship equivalent last July.

Leonard said that although this vast improvement was possible, it would be very hard to achieve. "But the final 100m was impossible. Flat out. If all her split times had been faster I don't think anybody would be calling it into question, because she is a good swimmer. But to swim three other splits at the rate that she did, which was quite ordinary for elite competition, and then unleash a historic anomaly, it is just not right."

Asked about the accusation that she was doping, Ye replied: "The Chinese team keep very firmly to the anti-doping policies, so there is absolutely no problem."

Leonard also questioned why Ye was not competing in the 200m or 400m freestyle, despite her phenomenal performance in that discipline in the medley, saying that was one of "a whole bunch of other questions".

He has been executive director of the WSCA since 1989. "I have been around swimming for four-and-a-half decades now," he said. "If you have been around swimming you know when something has been done that just isn't right. I have heard commentators saying 'well she is 16, and at that age amazing things happen'. Well yes, but not that amazing. I am sorry."

Leonard said that the consensus in the coaching community he represents was that the swim was "unbelievable". "I use that word in its precise meaning. At this point it is not believable to many people," he added.

"No coach that I spoke to yesterday could ever recall seeing anything remotely like that in a world level competition," Leonard continued. "Where someone could out-split one of the fastest male swimmers in the world, and beat the woman ahead of her by three-and-a-half body lengths. All those things, I think, legitimately call that swim into question."

Ye also won the 200m medley at the World Championships in 2011, and qualified fastest for the semi-finals of that event in Monday morning's heats, in a time that was 1.61sec quicker than her nearest competitor.

Leonard also argued that it was fair to point to the positive tests incurred by Chinese athletes in the past. In 2009 five junior Chinese swimmers were banned after testing positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol at the 2008 national junior championships .

"You can't turn around and call it racism to say the Chinese have a doping history," Leonard said. "That is just history. That's fact. Does that make us suspicious? Of course. You have to question any outrageous performance, and that is an outrageous performance, unprecedented in any way, shape or form in the history of our sport. It by itself, regardless of whether she was Chinese, Lithuanian, Kenyan, or anything else, is impossible. Sorry."

Leonard rejected comparisons to Michael Phelps, who broke the 200m butterfly world record when he was just 15, back in 2001 because the American got "consistently faster every year on a normal improvement curve".

He said he had no qualms about the performance of other Chinese swimmers, including the new Olympic 400m freestyle champion Sun Yang, 20. "He has a perfectly normal improvement curve, he is a dramatically spectacular athlete in our sport and I've no question about him at all. But a woman does not out-swim the fastest man in the world in the back quarter of a 400m IM that is otherwise quite ordinary. It just doesn't happen."

Blood samples taken at these Games will be kept for eight years. "I am sure that Fina and the doping authorities have taken every sample they can take," Leonard said. "The sample will be tested and available for testing for the next eight years. And over eight years, if there is something unusual going on in terms of genetic manipulation or something else, I would suspect over eight years' science will move fast enough to catch it. I have every faith that eventually if there is something there to be caught it will be caught. Right now all we can say is Olympic champion, world record holder, and watch out for history."But Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission and a veteran anti-doping official, said that as yet he had no particular suspicions around the Chinese swimmer.

"Should I have my suspicions I keep them for myself, first of all, and take any action, if so, in order to find out whether something is wrong or not. You ask me specifically about this particular swimming. I say no, I have not personally any reason other than to applaud what has happened, until I have further facts, if so."

Ljungqvist added that he was unaware of which athletes had been tested in the build-up to the Games. He described the IOC's mandate as "limited" because its testing programme only covers the period from when the athlete's village opens.

"We have a testing programme, as you know, that covers only the period from the opening of the village until the end of the Games, and any doping programme would probably be put in place long before then," he said. "So our mandate is pretty limited and it is therefore very much a matter of the international federations and the national Olympic committees to make sure that athletes are clean when they come here."

Ljungqvist said that sudden advances in performance could bring athletes under closer scrutiny but said "sport is in danger" if surprise performances automatically provoke suspicion.

"We are using many reasons for having target testing. Of course should a sudden rise in performance occur in a particular person, we could regard that possibly as a reason to do it, but I would rather say that it is tragic if that should be the primary reason for doing a testing."Calls to the Chinese Olympic Committee's listed press attache for the London Games, Zhang Haifeng, went unanswered on Monday.

With athletes willing to cheat caught in an ongoing arms race with anti-doping authorities employing ever more sophisticated means to catch them, they continue to be caught doping. On the eve of the London Games, the International Association of Athletics Federations banned nine athletes.

IOC president, Jacques Rogge, in his opening press conference, said the fact that doping cheats were being caught and banned was a positive sign and said the fact samples would be held for up to eight years was a major deterrent. Three athletes have been sent home for doping offences since the Games began.

"As far as the athletes being caught positive before the Games, this is a good sign for the fight against doping. In all, in total, 107 athletes were caught positive in the two months preceding the Olympic Games," he said.

"We are continuing to test and test and test again before the competition. We will be testing, of course, during the competition, but I will say that this is proof that the system works, that the system is effective and that the system is a deterrent one."

Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, said anyone doping at the Games would be caught. "China gets more gold medals than any other country so they're always going to be a target as the top dog. They are outstanding athletes, but we need to remember that this is the most heavily policed Olympics ever in terms of doping," he said. "The regime is incredibly thorough and incredibly strict. So if there are people who are doing what they shouldn't, we can be as confident as we'll ever be that they will be found out."

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[singveld]

London 2012 Olympics: 16-year-old Ye Shiwen’s swim 'impossible’, says coach John Leonard
One of the world’s most senior swimming coaches has raised serious doubts about the validity of the “unbelievable” performance of Ye Shiwen, the 16-year-old Chinese swimmer.

John Leonard, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, yesterday compared Ye’s winning performance in the women’s 400m individual medley to Irish swimmer Michelle Smith, who won gold in the same event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics but was banned from swimming for four years in 1998 for tampering with a urine sample. Smith, now De Bruin, always denied using performance enhancing drugs.
Ye sent shock waves through her sport on Saturday when she set the first swimming world record of these Olympics, and in doing so swam the final 50m freestyle faster than American swimmer Ryan Lochte managed in his final leg when he won the same race in the men’s event.
“We want to be very careful about calling it doping,” Leonard said.
“The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, 'unbelievable’, history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of 400m individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta.
“Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping”. Ye was more than seven seconds faster in the 400m individual medley than she had been in the equivalent race of the World Championships last year. While Leonard accepted that such improvement was feasible, he described the final 100m as “impossible”. He added: “To swim three other splits at the rate that she did, which was quite ordinary for elite competition, and then unleash a historic anomaly, it is just not right. I have heard commentators saying 'well she is 16, and at that age amazing things happen’. Well yes, but not that amazing, I am sorry.”

Ye has never failed a drugs test and, when asked about the issue of doping, she said: “The Chinese team keep very firmly to the anti-doping policies, so there is absolutely no problem.”
Leonard, who has been executive director of the WSCA since 1989, claimed that the consensus in the coaching community was that the swim was “unbelievable”. He said: “I use that word in its precise meaning. At this point it is not believable to many people.” Lochte, the American men’s swimming star of these Olympics, admitted that “if she was there with me, she might have beat me”.
The performance of Ye was also questioned immediately after the race by Clare Balding, the BBC presenter, in her discussions with former British Olympian Mark Foster. “How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?” she said. Blood samples taken at these Games will be kept for eight years. “I have every faith that eventually if there is something there to be caught it will be caught,” Leonard told a newspaper.