A row involving China’s swimming superstar Sun Yang and an air hostess has given the Chinese a turbulent buildup to the world championships in Barcelona, Spain.
The swimming section of the world aquatic championships starts on Sunday with Sun spearheading China’s bid to dethrone the US’ swimming supremacy at the top of the medals table.
Sun, 21, led his country to their best-ever Olympic performance in London last year, snaring two gold medals and smashing his own 1,500m freestyle world record as China finished with five titles.
Along with teen phenom Ye Shiwen, beset by doping innuendo as she claimed two individual medley golds, China cemented their new position as the world’s No. 2 team behind the US, but a falling-out between Sun and his coach over his love affair with a stewardess has rocked the Asian swimming power.
Sun, the tall distance specialist from Zhejiang, rejected coach Zhu Zhigen’s demand that he stop seeing his new girlfriend and concentrate on his swimming instead. Despite a public show of reconciliation with Zhu, Sun has been training in Hong Kong under former Chinese head coach Zhang Yadong and it is unclear which events he plans to contest in Barcelona.
“Athletes want to get good results, and to do that you need systematic and scientific training without outside interference,” Sun said on his official microblog. “I was not able to do this in the past for various reasons and have been making up ground through my own efforts. With the world championships approaching, I want to eliminate outside interference and prepare well, to give me added strength.”
Sun became the leading light of Chinese swimming when he tore up Grant Hackett’s 10-year-old 1,500m record at the 2011 Shanghai world championships — a mark he lowered again at the Olympics.
Sun also claimed the 800m world title in Shanghai, but Chinese officials were unsure whether he will defend it this month — or swim any events at all — after he only signed up for the 1,500m and 400m freestyle.
While attention will focus on Sun, 17-year-old Ye will also be in the spotlight as she tries to defend her 200m individual medley world title and again deflect the speculation that accompanied her feats at the London Games.
Ye, then 16, raised eyebrows when she obliterated the 400m medley world record with a sensational freestyle lap, timing faster over the final leg than men’s winner Ryan Lochte a few races earlier.
“I was very depressed and angry after London, but everything is fine now,” she told Britain’s Independent last month. “It is a long journey. Different people have their different views, but I will just keep on going.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier