Is It Fair to Speculate/Insinuate That Chinese Women's Swimmer Ye Shiwen Is Doping, as John Leonard Did at the Olympics?

This question originally appeared on Quora.

By Alex Wang, Former Collegiate Swimmer

It's completely unfair. Ye is being accused of doping because her performance was unexpected by people who haven't been following her.

People tend to like predictability. Breaking a 400 meter record by one second is much less of an abnormality than winning eight gold medals. But since American media repeated over and over how phenomenal Michael Phelps was, there was no surprise involved.

People also like having a reason for why events - especially unpredictable ones - happened. To many people, including people deeply involved in swimming, Ye is an unknown. How can an unknown person break a world record? The only explanation at hand is performance-enhancing drugs.

Here are some facts that will help explain why Ye's performance should not have been as much of a surprise as it was:

One is that the bar of "better final 50 split than Ryan Lochte in the same event" is hardly insurmountable. Lochte had a 3-4 second lead going into that final 50 and, with a dozen events left to swim in the week, was justifiably on cruise control. No doubt if Phelps had been breathing down his neck, he would have been going faster. Lochte also doesn't have the fastest final 50 in the 400 IM - at Olympic Trials, he was 13th of 109 (with several men within a tenth of a second) in prelims and 4th of 8 in the finals (placing first overall in both). Is Ye's freestyle split ridiculous and unprecedented? Yes. But the comparison to Lochte, despite his being one of the best in the world at finishing a 400 IM, is a false call to authority.

The other is that Ye actually has had a reputation for blowing away her opponents in the freestyle leg of the IM for over a year. See this article from last July: http://theswimmerscircle.com/201... . So if you were a hardcore Ye Shiwen fan, you would have been hoping for her to be competitive after the breaststroke, because you would have known what was coming. But this reputation isn't widely known, since not very many Americans watch the Chinese swim outside of the Olympics or World Championships.

The improvement in her performance also isn't as sudden as it might appear. She put up a ~4:35 in July 2011, a 4:33 in October (http://swimswam.com/2011/10/chin...), a 4:31 in prelims. Cutting seven seconds in a year in a 400 meter event is fairly reasonable - one second off of every 50 - especially when you consider how young she is and what the potential for growth is at her age.

This all isn't to say definitively one way or the other if she's doping - only that her performance in the 400 IM at the Olympics is not reason enough to accuse her. She should receive the same scrutiny as if she finished second.

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Comments

[crislevin]

11:40 AM on 08/03/2012

She passed the test multiple times, what more do you want? John Leonard is a disgrace.

Talk about doping scandal, US of A is top notch, stop being ridiculous.

[Ben Moran]

03:19 PM on 08/03/2012

Did you not even read what I said? The tests do not have the capability of testing for the illegal activities of blood doping eg; EPO (Erythropoietin) or autologous blood transfusions. Not to mention the simple act of breathing pure oxygen (possibly under pressure) as in apnea/ dynamic apnea competition. Any of these whilst being nearly impossible to detect would give the desired effect of increasing endurance. That is why I say that whilst it may seem unfair the athletes should be forced to keep bio passports as in cycling and show a proven record of training improvement when requested to put possible doubts to rest.

[Charles Liu]

01:47 PM on 08/13/2012

Then John Leonard should've levied the same accusation against Katie Ledecky as well. The fact he didn't means it's unfair.

[Ben Moran]

08:20 AM on 08/03/2012

Of course it wasn't wrong to question it. Unbelievable and amazing performances should be questioned. Phelps signed up for additional out of competition testing as part of project believe and actually has training videos that demonstrate the superiority of his stroke technique over his peers and a body of publicly available work showing his progress to the top. It was no surprise that he won eight golds in Beijing because on paper going in he was predicted to and even then he received the usual "is it too good to be true?" questions. To Chinese readers if you want to be number one as you certainly have the ability to be given your population base and government funding being put into sport you will have to defend against these claims. Also an attack on one of your athletes is not an attack necessarily an attack on you. I am of Irish heritage and remember all too sadly Michelle Smith at Atlanta and how the Irish where horrified at even the accusation that their "golden girl" was dirty. Years later it turned out she was and proven too late to strip her medals leaving the greatest Irish Olympian as a proven drug cheat. Imagine the effect of something like that on a nations consciousness if you will.

[Ben Moran]

08:40 AM on 08/03/2012

continued; Bottom line I believe that a guilty until proven innocent view may be the only attitude to take in sport (I realize how terrible that sounds) whereby athletes must keep a "biological passport" as in cycling effectively putting the onus upon then to prove that they are clean. FYI her times have been statistically analyzed and have shown some pretty astounding variances (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2012/aug/02/olympics-2012-ye-shiwen-400-medley-statistics-data?fb=native). Bottom line China has poured a massive amount of money into their swimming program and that puts a huge amount of pressure on their athletes and coaches to perform. The reason that blood samples are kept for 8 years is because at present we have no effective means to test for all types of blood doping widely used in Special Forces to increase endurance and power). All we can say with certainty is that she produced a world record in a split layout never before seen in the sport and tested clean under best testing. But to try and gag those who demand free inquiry to question such performances would be truly appalling.

On a personal note as a distance swimmer who has spent many an hour pouring over Sun Yang's stroke there is nothing suspicion in his rise at all and I reckon he's about to lower that world record even further in the final. Go Sun!

[Oslodude]

08:17 AM on 08/08/2012

Consider this:

You are an evil pedophile. And will continue to be considered an evil pedophile until 8 years have passed, and only then, if you have proven that I am wrong, will you retroactively considered to not be an evil pedophile.

This is how ridiculous your position is! What you propose is that medal ceremonies for all athletes be delayed by 8 years, so that all the winners in 2012 will need to travel to the 2020 Olympics in order to be recognized and awarded their medals.

[Wani Collins]

05:24 AM on 08/03/2012

Of course that is the American way. Put down anyone who wins spectacularly but is not an Americans. Americans think they are the only ones in the world that should break records. Tests should immediately be done on Michael Phelps to see if he is on performance enhancing drugs! The arrogance of America shows that they are not fit to be in the OLympics! Sour grapes indeed!

[vrts800]

07:32 PM on 08/02/2012

Ye Shiwen means "Yeah She Won" in Chinese. So deal with it John Leonard and hang your head in shame.

[ScottCU]

02:36 PM on 08/02/2012

The answer to this headline is "Yes." There is no doubt that she was on some performance enhancing drug. First, it simply is not possible for a 16 year old girl to naturally swim a faster 50 m leg at the end of the 400 IM than the best man in the world. Not sexist, just fact. But, the real proof is that just this past March, a 16 year old Chinese swimmer tested positive. We undoubtedly have athletes in the USA that cheat through drugs, but we don't have a state run system. Our cheaters act unilaterally or with the help of their personal coaches. Under the Chinese communist governement sports system, athletes don't make their own choices and take a banned substance without permission. There is no way that a 16 year old Chinese athlete would risk humiliating his government and country and the punishment that would be given to him by making a unilateral choice to use a performance enhancer. So, we know that the Chinese government was giving its young swimmers drugs in March 2012. They surely didn't clean up their act in just 4 months.

[Jonathan Shaner]

05:08 PM on 08/02/2012

There are so many factual mistakes in your reply that it may break a world record.

First, why isn't it possible for her to swim a faster last split than Lochte? Lochte was swimming slower than 4 of the swimmers he BEAT in that race. He wasn't exactly at his fastest. So you're saying that a female sprinter, in the last 50m, can't beat the speed of a male marathoner? Huh? Besides, Rebecca Adlington of the UK swam a last 50 split of 28.91 when she won gold in the 800m free in the 2011 World Championships. If a swimmer can do that last 50m split in an 800m race, there's nothing unbelievable about doing it in a 400 m race.

Secondly, yeah a Chinese swimmer was kicked off the team before the Olympics. She was the champion swimmer of the team, and Ye replaced her. What you have not mentioned is that she was found out by the Chinese and voluntarily banned by the Chinese. According to your government conspiracy theory, why would they kick out a doping swimmer to replace her with another doping swimmer who they weren't even sure was going to swim as fast? Use some common sense.

[Heapster]

05:28 PM on 08/02/2012

Thanks Jonathan for knocking some sense into these ignorant folks.

[Heapster]

05:24 PM on 08/02/2012

Did you know that that Chinese athlete, Li Zheshi was tested and dropped by the Chinese team - this means that she WAS acting on her own volition to dope, not because she was forced to do so by the Chinese govt. Cheating is cheating whether done so through athlete's own choice or whether its state sponsored. In fact, China is so embarrassed by the doping scandals that they are flying in their own food for all their Olympics athletes because most meats nowadays contain growth hormones.

[Demeralda]

02:20 PM on 08/02/2012

People act as if it is wrong to even question it. If you are an expert in your area, you know when something looks suspicious. Since when is it wrong to ask questions, given all we now know about doping in baseball, in the Tour de France, and yes, even past Olympic events.

Clearly most people around the world don't know about the wonders of biochemistry.

[Haleybllooming]

01:44 PM on 08/06/2012

It's not about her taking it or not but honestly to publicly accuse of this 16 year old girl of anything should be taken to the officials, not to newspaper and media. Until there is evidence, just congratulate her on her success. Also no one is surprised about Missy Franklin or Katie Ledecky, who both won gold(s) in swimming and are 15. Not to mention that Ledecky beat her personal best by more than 5 seconds in less than a month. Leonard and other people never said they're taking drugs and even praised them, so why be harsh to a Chinese teenage swimmer?

[Ning Zhang]

02:11 PM on 08/02/2012

Since when did this great nation called America become a great nation of disgraceful sour grapes and sore losers, and a bunch of idiotic, sino-phobic, 40-50 years old whiners, wolf-pack-attacking a 16 years old innocent girl who happend to be Chinese and who happened to swim too fast for her own and her country's good?

As Chinese American, I feel so much more proud of my Chinese heritage and the future of my children suddenly looks so much brighter, knowing that they are going to compete with mostly a whole bunch of sore losers and whiners in the 21st century!

P.S. the # of swimming pools and tennis courts in my rich neighbourhood (of less than 500 families) are greater than a 5 million people Chinese city, and my Chinese American kids, together with most of their friends, start swimming/skating/hockey lessons and play soccer/basketball/tennis/golf/baseball at age of 3. So why on earth are we Americans whining about China giving their poor kids a shot at 6, and calling it "sport machines"? my rich neighbourhood (of 500 families) has a bigger sports machine than a 5 million people Chinese city combined...

[Haav Bline]

01:32 PM on 08/02/2012

The Guardian of UK had a poll:

"Does John Leonard owe Ye Shiwen an apology?"

98% YES
1% NO

Clearly, most people around the world still believe in evidence, fairness, decency, civility, and innocent before proven guilty.

[ScottCU]

03:23 PM on 08/02/2012

And 1% wonder who John Leonard and Ye Shiwen are.

[Heapster]

05:27 PM on 08/02/2012

The 1% who says no are John Leonard and all the US swimmers.