Internationally famous Chinese man Yao Ming has been color-commentating the men’s basketball games on CCTV, but as has always been his case, he’s too intelligent and opinionated to be boxed in by his sport. Very recently, as reported by Reuters, he spoke on the record with Xinhua about the badminton and Ye Shiwen controversies:

“(The) same kind of things happen in basketball. It’s a simple question. Is the match-fixing scandal right? Does a gold medal (mean) more than anything else?”, Yao said.

“People have different attitudes to the Olympics and I must say some sports need to polish the rules. I feel really sorry for the punished players. They are the victims.”

About Ye Shiwen, the swimmer who shattered an Olympic world record, Yao makes a reference to Usain Bolt:

“I can understand the Americans who dominated the pool for decades. It’s a common reaction,” Yao said.

“It happened when (Jamaican sprinter) Usain Bolt emerged and it happened again with Ye.

“Ye jumped out from nowhere to take away the glories that the Americans thought belonged to them for a long time. It’s not a good feeling,” Yao added. “But I think the Americans were not gentlemenly when they said … that.”

On the badminton controversy, I’ll reiterate: you can hate on the players all you want and call their action despicable, but to disqualify them for simply trying to set up a more favorable elimination-round matchup — because isn’t the point of the event to win gold? — is unprecedented, subjective, and rash, and causes more controversy than it resolves. (If a British team was entangled in the controversy, would the BWF jumped straight to disqualification?) There are other ways of punishing players and national badminton federations to discourage players from doing this in the future, though the best solution still remains scrapping the awful tournament format, the blame for which lies squarely with the IOC and Badminton World Federation. The BWF indeed stole an opportunity from the teams it disqualified, specifically the No. 1 team in the world, Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, and everyone involved rightly should feel a little more cynical about the Olympics, which deserves to be about the athletes instead of overzealous officials.

We applaud Yao for his comments, and eagerly await his assessment of the winless men’s basketball team.

(H/T Tyler Cohen)

A Ye Shiwen ad on CCTV-5 preceded the race. Coming off the block in the fourth lane, she appeared to emerge from the water and break into the butterfly too early, but she was still in first place coming off the turn. She was barely in first after the backstroke, but slipped to third after the backstroke. It was quickly apparently, at the beginning of this final 50 meters, that she was going to win. We said in an earlier post that if she’s even close to the frontrunner headed into the final 50, it’s “over” — it’s her performance in the freestyle portion of the 400m IM, after all, that evoked suspicion of her “unbelievable” skills — how could a girl outperform a man in this final 50-meter split?

Turns out the reason is she’s damn good at it. Ye continued to pull ahead of Australia’s Alicia Coutts and never looked back, winning by six-tenths of a second. Her time of 2:07:57 was a new Olympic record, eclipsing the Olympic record she set yesterday in the preliminary heat.

In the post-swim interview, Ye revealed that she got up at 6 am but slept at 2 am, and that makes sense because whenever she sleeps late, she gets up early. She struck me as someone with the aplomb of a girl much, much older than 16. The only thing that gave away her age was the way she smiled before turning away from the reporter and the camera. It’s not something I can quite describe, not at 4 am anyway. The smile of a child champion and world-beater, perhaps. Congratulations to her, once again.

UPDATE, 4:05 am: With Sun Yang anchoring the 800-meter men’s freestyle relay, China won its first-ever men’s relay medal, a bronze, finishing behind the US and France. The team edged Germany by 0.29 seconds, with Sun Yang so tired afterward that he lay on his back for several moments on the edge of the pool, huffing.

While we all await Ye Shiwen’s next race — she’s the top qualifier (and Olympic record-holder) in the 200-meter individual medley, which begins at 8:43 pm London time / 3:43 am Beijing time — you might be interested to know that women’s gymnastics is on right now. Other Olympics stuff happened too, as you’ll see if you read on.

Ye Shiwen has passed her drug test: “The International Olympic Committee has sprung to the defense of China’s teenage swim sensation Ye Shiwen, saying she passed a drug test after her world record win in the 400 medley. // IOC spokesman Mark Adams urged people to ‘get real’ and said it is ‘very sad’ if great performances cannot be applauded.” [Globe and Mail]

World Anti-Doping Agency clears her as well, and she also has the support of Lord Colin Moynihan, head of the British Olympic Association. [BBC]

Chinese delegation hits back: “But others have argued that young athletes can make remarkable breakthroughs and have pointed to the way the Chinese system picks individuals for their physique and drills them rigorously. // Jiang [Zhixue, who leads anti-doping work at China's General Administration of Sport] said China’s swimming team had made breakthroughs due to scientific training and sheer hard work. // He added: ‘The Chinese athletes, including the swimmers, have undergone nearly 100 drug tests since they arrived here. // ‘Many were also tested by the international federations and the British anti-doping agency. I can tell you that so far there was not a single positive case.’ // The deputy anti-doping chief Zhao Jian said Leonard ‘thinks too much’ and urged people to wait for test results.” [The Guardian]

And one more, via The Diplomat:

Swimming writer John Lohn admitted that while China has a record of doping, that was in the past.

He criticized the doubters.

“What a bloody shame,” he wrote. “For some of the sport’s avid followers, it was enough to sit back and appreciate what will go down as one of the finest performances in the pool in years.”

Lohn noted that while China has a record of doping, that was a different time. “Its track record opens itself up — to a degree — to a level of doubt…. Still, the accusations fired at Ye are out of line in this age of drug testing. … Instead of dirtying her achievement with unfounded claims and doubts, it would be wiser to appreciate a performance which was legendary.”

And now for your non-Ye news…

A “child” with a lot more dignity than this paper: “A Chinese newspaper apologized on Tuesday for attacking one of the country’s young Olympic weightlifters for her performance at the London Games. // Zhou Jun failed to lift the starting weight in the 53-kg category on Saturday, prompting The Metropolis Times in the south-west city of Kunming to label it ‘the most shameful defeat for Chinese female weightlifters.’ // The paper, scorned by readers and commentators, issued an apology and said it lost sight of the Olympic spirit and was aware Zhou, 17, was ‘only a child.’” [Reuters]

Point/counterpoint:

Reuters: “Chinese swimmer Lu Ying, fresh from winning a silver medal in the women’s 100 metre butterfly, spoke out after the race against the Chinese training system, in a rare display of criticism from one of the country’s athletes.”

China Daily headline: “Robots? Nope — just really good athletes.”

If you guessed Global Times would be the first to use the “Rising Sun” pun in relation to Sun Yang, you were correct. “Rising Sun stands tall with Chinese sport icons.” [Global Times]

No one understands why London is advertising Chinese milk, apparently:

Via Asia Society:

Yili, a Chinese milk company based in Inner Mongolia, recently launched an ad campaign on London’s iconic double-decker buses that had locals scratching their heads. The ad shows Chinese men and women, none of whom are recognizable celebrities or athletes, alongside the brand’s logo, in Chinese. No Yili products are for sale in London, and few clues on the buses hint as to the significance of these people.

With the help of Chinese translators, however, a handful of London bloggers were able to decipher the ad. Yili’s campaign is a coordinated effort with Youku, the Chinese YouTube, intended to promote the “Olympic spirit” of average Chinese citizens who lead active, healthy lifestyles.

Finally…

Twitter suspends journalist’s account… a journalist who happens to be highly critical of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics… Twitter, which just happens to be an NBC partner for these Olympics… [The Independent, via Deadspin]

China’s men’s basketball team is 0-2 after its 73-54 loss to Russia.

US and North Korea are playing each other in women’s soccer, marking the first time Old Trafford has hosted women’s soccer in its 102-year-old history. [NY Times]

We’re at the point where Ye Shiwen can no longer be found guilty in China, if that makes sense. This issue has become about more than swimming. If it ever does come to light that Ye used a banned substance, I suspect the relevant organs will find a scapegoat who admits that he accidentally put an illegal substance in her food or something, and no one — not the media, the Chinese swim officials, the millions on Weibo — will have to lose face.

It’s unfortunate we’ve reached this point. How did we get here? How did an off the cuff statement by the BBC’s Clare Balding — “How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?” — lead to Chinese netizens turning this into a nationalistic us vs. them issue?

There’s no good answer, of course, except that this always happens. And it’ll definitely happen during the Olympics, which are disproportionally more important to China — serving as a nationalistic spectacle that rallies the populace — than most countries. Let’s not forget, either, that this is a country that reveres its sports heroes, especially those who emerge as world-beaters. It’s difficult to tear down pedestals once they’ve been built.

Instead of even considering the possibility that we, as spectators, have been duped into believing in athletic greatness, many here seem to have decided to argue on completely different grounds. It’s a knee-jerk response that has, unfortunately, continued on past the knee-jerk phase. Here’s a sampling of comments on Sina Weibo from today:

@风小尧yumi: How brain-dead are you? You must be the ones on drugs. You must all be using banned substances, so you see someone else win and you suspect the same. Unbearable.

@candy肖涵: BBC = biased broadcasting corporation…

@Nani_天亮说晚安: I’ll say this directly: if you’re jealous of a our girl beating your male swimmer, then move from Great Britain (over to China), stop talking nonsense from home.

We’re conditioned to believe the Olympics aren’t political, but that’s a bald-faced lie, isn’t it? The Olympics are intertwined with politics, and the case of Ye Shiwen is a perfect example.

If you are interested in talking about the sports side of this issue, we can do that. The best piece I’ve encountered yet is from Ross Tucker, PhD, on The Science of Sport, as excerpted in the Guardian:

The only way to interpret that is to recognise that the physiology of a fast finish tells us that she must have a significant reserve for that final leg. It says that her first 300m was an extremely conservative effort. The simple question is: “Under what circumstances does a female have the capacity to finish a race as fast as a male?”

To answer this, think back to the key concept — finishing ability is a function of how close we are to our potential. To finish as fast as Shiwen does, relative to an unfatigued, isolated 100m freestyle, implies that she has a lot more potential in the event than was realised with her world record. The fact that Shiwen could close as fast as Lochte suggests to me that her efforts over the first 300m of that final took very little out of her.

If that is true, then her overall performance is a significant underperformance. The allocation of energy over the course of the race might be debated, but what physiology suggests is that it should probably be more even for Shiwen, and it would allow her to swim quite a lot faster than the 4:28.43 that she did.

But few seem interested in this. China’s sports officials certainly aren’t doing themselves any favors with responses like this one from Xu Qi, “team leader” of the swim team, as quoted by Xinhua:

Ye Shiwen’s swim result was expected. It is a little bit better than we had hoped, but not surprising…

To compare Ye’s result with [men's 400m IM winner Ryan] Lochte’s is meaningless. Ye was behind after 300m and she need to try her best to win the race, but Lochte had already established the lead before the freestyle and didn’t need to do his utmost.

…Michael Phelps won eight gold medals at the Beijing Games, and American swimmer Missy Franklin is also incredible. Why can’t China have a talented swimmer?

These are all meaningless quotes, failing to engage on the relevant terms.

Then we have other swim officials who seem unwilling to cop to China’s past transgressions in the Olympics, namely the fact that dozens of Chinese swimmers were banned for using illegal substances in the 1990s. “We never questioned Michael Phelps when he bagged eight gold medals in Beijing,” Jiang Zhixue, anti-doping chief of China’s General Administration of Sport, told Xinhua. He then noted Chinese athletes have undergone nearly 100 drug tests since arrival without a single positive case, yet… yet…

BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) — Teenage swimming world champion Li Zhesi has tested positive for banned substance, China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) announced here on Saturday.

It will, however, appease — or inflame, which could be as good — those back home, where the conversation is running on a parallel track. Nowhere on Weibo did I encounter anyone discussing the science of split times in these medley races, or critically thinking about how Ye can be so good at the freestyle yet not be entered in any individual freestyle events, or even mention the name “John Leonard,” the American coach who first accused Ye of doping. Instead, we get:

@beerao: Westerners are people too. Everyone is able to be jealous. Please excuse their ignorance.

Yeah, Ye Shiwen is officially too big to fail — too important to this country’s “feelings” to have cheated. That she’s a world-class swimmer — with or without drugs, mind you — is becoming ancillary to a fact more pertinent to Chinese netizens at large: she’s China’s world-class swimmer.

Thankfully, other athletes haven’t taken the bait on this narrative. “No swimmers accused Ye, who is 5 feet 8 inches and weighs 141 pounds, of using illicit substances to fuel her kick,” reports the NY Times. And thankfully, not all netizens are clueless. @瘦身部落 points out, matter-of-factly, “Stimulant testing is the best response.”

Right? And testing is what will happen, because samples are kept for eight years, which is plenty of time for science to catch up to whatever is today’s illegal substance du jour. Until the shelf life of these samples runs out — or until a definitive answer emerges — all this chatter is pointless speculation.

And politics, of course. Although, in my opinion, that’s even more pointless.

All eyes will be on Ye Shiwen tonight (8:43 pm London, 3:43 am Beijing) when she competes in the 200-meter individual medley (she set an Olympic record in her preliminary heat). If she’s anywhere close to the lead in the final turn, the competition is, as we say, over, because no one is in her league in the freestyle.

Before that happens though, let us relive her swim in the 400 IM, which has come under scrutiny after an American coach accused her of being too good to have not cheated.

A second quote from Ye has surfaced, a much cleaner denial than her first quote (included in the above link). Canada’s National Post reports that Ye told reporters: “My results come from hard work and training and I would never used any banned drugs. The Chinese people have clean hands.”

And according to The New Zealand Herald:

“There is no doping, the Chinese team has always had a firm anti-doping policy,” she said.

“Michael Phelps won eight gold medals at the Beijing Games, and American swimmer Missy Franklin is also incredible. Why can’t China have a talented swimmer?”

Ye believes she can go even faster.

“I feel like I still have room to improve my stroke,” she told China Daily.

“I’ve strengthened my backstroke and butterfly, so I am getting better at the start. But I am still young and have some more potential in my body.

“I dreamed of winning the gold medal, but I never ever expected to break the record. So I am overwhelmed,” she said.

I think the above will play for those in North America, though you may need to pause to let it buffer.

John Leonard and Ye Shiwen

Ye Shiwen, the 16-year-old swimmer who set a new world record on Saturday in the 400-meter individual medley, has been accused of cheating.

The Guardian’s Andy Bull, who on Sunday published a very interesting and insightful account of Ye’s swim and the reactions to it and her teammates (“Over the course of the 1990s [China] had 40 swimmers banned after positive doping tests. The sceptics – or perhaps cynics – would say that the doubts about Ye, [bronze-medalist] Li [Xuanxu] and [gold-medalist] Sun [Yang] are the inevitable consequence of that history”), has just published a much more controversial follow-up.

In this article, John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, is given all the space he wants to explain why he — and, he implies, lots of others — thinks Ye cheated. Since the article is basically Leonard’s editorial, we’ve gone ahead and cut out the middleman so you have just the American coach’s published words:

Unbelievable… disturbing… brings back a lot of awful memories.

We want to be very careful about calling it doping. 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.

…Looks like superwoman. Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping.

I have been around swimming for four-and-a-half decades now. 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.

Unbelievable… I use that word in its precise meaning. At this point it is not believable to many people.

No coach that I spoke to yesterday could ever recall seeing anything remotely like that in a world level competition. 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.

You can’t turn around and call it racism to say the Chinese have a doping history. 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.

[Michael] Phelps got consistently faster every year on a normal improvement curve. There has never been anything that you look at in any of Mr Phelps’ swims that you look at and say “well, that’s impossible, that can’t be done.”

[Sun Yang, 20,] 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.

I am sure that Fina and the doping authorities have taken every sample they can take. 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.

The Guardian’s piece is still worth looking at though, if only for the measured response of Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission and a veteran anti-doping official.

Ye, for her part, has denied the accusations:

“There’s absolutely no problem with the doping,” Ye said on Monday, according to a translation provided by the official Olympic News Service. “The Chinese team has always had a firm policy about doping.”

Lars Baron / Getty Images

Aside from the men’s gymnastics team losing pommel horse gold medalist Teng Haibin to injury, China’s Olympics are going just swell. Some highlights:

In the opening women’s basketball game, China, ranked 7th in FIBA, upset world runner-up Czech Republic, ranked 4th, 66-57. No other team in China’s pool, other than the US, is in FIBA’s top 20, for whatever that’s worth — though Croatia gave the US a close game for three quarters. Second place is within grasp for Team China.

Here is Yi Siling, via Buzzfeed, who won the first gold medal of the Games when she came from behind to beat Poland’s Sylwia Bogacka in the 10-meter air rifle:

Sun Yang may be receiving congratulatory texts from Dwyane Wade, but Ye Shiwen, reportedly only 16, made one hell of a swim, too. Reports NY Times: “Then, 16-year-old Ye Shiwen smashed the world record in the women’s 400 individual medley by more than a second: all the more remarkable because she swam the last 50 meters in a faster time than the new men’s 400 I.M. champion, Ryan Lochte, swam his last 50 meters.” She set a world record of 4 minutes, 28.43 seconds despite swimming in a textile suit, unlike the polyester suit worn by the previous record holder.

Yi Jianlian is going to have a monster Olympics and be swooped up by an NBA team. China’s men’s basketball team lost 97-81 in its opener to Spain, but there were several positives to be gleaned from the contest. Chen Jianghua and Wang Shipeng, both guards with the Guangdong Southern Tigers, had performances that stuck out for me, and China’s star, Yi Jianlian, registered a monster 30-point, 12-rebound effort. Spain is the prohibitive favorite in Pool B, so the games are expected to get a little easier from here — but not by much, in the case of the Brazil, Russia, Great Britain, and Australia games. That’s all the rest of the games, actually.

Diving dream team wins again. Reports BBC: “China continued their domination of Olympic diving as world champions Wu Minxia and He Zi easily won the women’s synchronised 3m springboard event. // The nation won all eight events at last year’s world championships and are expected to do the same in London. // Wu and He scored 346.20 to secure Wu her third successive Olympic title, with the United States taking silver and Canada edging Italy for bronze.”

South Korea edges China 210-209 in women’s team archery. No shame losing to South Korea, which has won seven consecutive gold medals in this event. Congratulations to them.

The Olympics rolls on. Stay tuned.