Lets get it out there. Who thought, "Impossible."
I do.
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Former Member
Are we having this conversation only because her last 50m freestyle was faster than Ryan Lochte, the man who had to swim fast enough to beat Michal Phelps?
Had she done a slower last 50m nobody would doubt her.
In this case I would rather be wrong defending than accusing, but then I have only been in this sport for several years and still naive in assuming.
I feel she just has the best genes for the event (i.e skin properties, weight distribution, proportions, strength, etc), as well as having a good swim.
Chance is on their side for a palpable reason.
Skin properties? Even Jazz wouldn't use that.
She went a 4:33 in the 400 IM in 2011, and was #2 in the world rankings for that event in 2011, so its hard to say she was not a medal favorite - and she was the top 200 IM swimmer in 2011, so perhaps its just that Chinese swimmers don't get the US media exposure that swimmers like Hozzu who swam the US college circuit did; She was also a 1:58.2 200 meter 200 free swimmer in 2011, #31 in the world. At age 16, she's at a stage of life where growth and improvement is to be expected.
Missy Franklin dropped from 1:59 to 1:55 in 200 free, and 2:08 to 2:50 200 back from 2010 to 2011 when she aged from 15 to 16, so similar drops at that age are not unusual.
And similar suprise last 50 free splits from strong fdreestyle swimmers do happen form time to time - at this year's ACC men's championships, the winner split 24.36 (one of the fastest alltime last 50s of this event) to overtake the leader after 150 who came home in 27.5. Ye Shiwen's last 100, while fast, was only about a second faster than Stephanie Rice's last 100 when she set her world record.
I bet the Chinese put her on their 800 free relay though, if she went 1:58.2 last year, you have to think she has a 1:56+ in her now (or better).
With their grueling training, Olympic athletes can swim numerous/back to back events. I don't find this suspicious. They recover quickly.
I find it much more suspicious to not be even a clear medal favorite, smash your PR, smash the tech suit WR and come back in the last 100 in 58+. Also quite odd that she is not in the 400 free or other freestyle events.
No one cares about German triathlon forums.
Why wasn't she in the 400 free?
This is the question I was asking myself too. Regardless of why her freestyle was so fast, her other splits in her 400IM were similar to her nearest competitors (and so, compared to her freestyle, terrible). If she can bring her 400IM home in under 1:00 why couldn't she do three more 100 frees just like it beforehand and go 3:56?
Just watched the race. Noticed she was the only swimmer that breathed every stroke in the fly, she also had less undulation then the others and used a mild kick. Was behind and out of view for the back, but from viewing above it looked like she was barely kicking there too. The free, well, I wish I could do a 50 with her finishing split.
Ye Shiwen and Sun Yang both seem to really focus on getting a ton of air and saving as much of their anaerobic energy stores for the end of the race. It seems to be working amazingly well for them!
They're still getting reported doping positives there- another 16 year old girl that probably would have been on their Olympic team got busted for EPO a while back. Though they're nowhere near Brazil these days when it comes to positives that we know about. (And Brazil's positives have come from so many different drugs that it seems unlikely that their national organization is organized enough to be behind the slew of +es.)
I think Peng Wu and Sun are clean; but given the back story and performance, I don't think it's unfair to speculate. when something doesn't fit usual patterns.
Remember Michelle Smith.
Good points made all around. I would put myself as skeptical but not going to out and out assume cheating.
Why wasn't she in the 400 free? I've got to think she will be around 1:53 in the 200 if she is on the relay.
To the question of if she had been American, would we still question it? Yes. Van Dyken, Lewis, Armstrong, Flo Jo etc... Yeah, we have a history too.
