Ye Shiwen Under Suspicion for Swimming Faster Than Lochte

Talk of London: Ye Shiwen is the talk of the London Olympics with her spectacular world-record swims.

Ye Shiwen not only broke the world record with her 400-meter individual medley, she swam the final 50 meters of her freestyle leg faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte swam in his own 400 IM gold-medal swim.

The buzz of suspicion that swim produced among sports analysts and doping experts increased to a fever pitch on Tuesday after the 16-year-old Ye won the 200 IM in a time that was not only a new world record but an astounding five seconds faster than her personal best.

Aside from her amazing times, the suspicion aroused by Ye’s spectacular speed improvements is fueled by a positive drug test that got her teammate Li Zhesi banned in June 2012. Ye’s own rise to become the team’s star coincides with Li’s ouster.

It wasn’t as though Ye came out of nowhere for the London Games. She had won gold in the 200-meter individual medley at the 2011 World Aquatic Championships in Shanghai, but in the 400-meter IM she had finished outside the top three.

The taint of suspicion began with the BBC’s coverage of the race when presenter Clare Balding turned to co-presenter, Mark Foster, a former British Olympian, and said, “How many questions will be there, Mark, about someone who can suddenly swim much faster than she has ever swum before?”

“It was pretty impressive,” said Ryan Lochte himself. “And it was a female. She’s fast. If she was there with me, I don’t know, she might have beat me.”

Ye’s swim provoked the adjective “disturbing” from John Leonard, the executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) and the World Swimming Coaches Association.

But Mark Adams, International Olympics Committee spokesman, called the doping suspicions against Ye “pure rumor” and “sad” since he had heard nothing from Olympic testers to have reason for suspicion.

“She’s been through (anti-doping agency) Wada’s programme and she’s clean,” said British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan in response to questions from reporters at a Tuesday press conference. “That’s the end of the story.” He added that Olympic drug testing was “on top of the game.”

“My achievements derive from diligence and hard work,” Ye said in response to doping suspicions. “I will never use drugs. Chinese athletes are clean.”

Ye had spent the final months before the Olympics training in Australia along with many of her teammates, including Sun Yang who won China’s first ever men’s gold medal in swimming in the 400-meter freestyle final just 25 minutes before Ye’s record swim last Saturday. The Chinese swim team has also won several other swimming medals in London already.

“I dreamed of winning the gold medal, but I never ever expected to break a world record, I’m overwhelmed,” Ye had said after learning of the outcome of her 400-meter IM race.

“If the coach asks me to practice 10,000 meters, I would never be a lazy player to swim 9,900 meters instead,” Ye told the Beijing Morning News.

Ye Shiwen was born in Hangzhou in eastern China. She began swimming at the age of six after her teacher noticed she had large hands and feet, according to China’s Xinhua state news agency. She was only 10 when her coach predicted she would become an Olympic champion after she won the 50-meter freestyle race in her peer group at the Zhejiang Province Games in 2006.

A year later Ye joined the Zhejiang provincial swimming team, then China’s national team a year later. At the age of 14 she won two gold medals at the Asian Games and two silver medals at the World Swimming Championships in Dubai.