SHANGHAI: Sun Yang’s victory in the men’s 1500 metres freestyle at the world swimming championships on Sunday may indicate a re-awakening of the country’s swimming programme.’
The gangly 19-year-old won his second gold medal of the championships in Shanghai, having already won the 800 freestyle title, and touched in 14 minutes 34.14 seconds to break Grant Hackett’s long-standing world record.
Canada’s Ryan Cochrane took the silver in 14:44.46 while Hungary’s Gergo Kis won bronze in 14:45.66.
The long-stroking Sun, who clocked 14:35.43 at the Asian Games last year, was chased hard by Cochrane, though the languid-looking Chinese never seemed bothered as he simply kept up his tempo and then accelerated over the final 100 metres to snatch gold and the record.
The victory ensured China finished second behind the United States on the swimming medal table, with five golds, two silvers and seven bronze medals.
More importantly, Sun’s performances at Shanghai, where he also took silver in the 400 freestyle and helped the 4×200 freestyle team to a bronze, indicated there may be a re-awakening of the Chinese swimming programme, which was mired in doping controversies in the 1990s.
Doping row: The Chinese won 12 gold medals at the Rome world championships in 1994 but the programme was stigmatised by suspicions of systematic doping in the 1990s that reached its nadir at the world championships in Perth in 1998.
Four swimmers failed out of competition doping tests conducted before the championships while another, Yuan Yuan, was caught at Sydney airport with human growth hormone in her bags.
Prior to Sun’s performances in Shanghai, the only gold medal a Chinese man had won at the world championships or Olympics was when Zhang Lin won the 800 freestyle in Rome in 2009.
Yao however, said the reasons why the country’s men’s team were now starting to perform — Wu Peng also won bronze in the 200 butterfly — was twofold.
”Firstly, the height and the size of our men’s team, if you look at our relay team, when they won the bronze medal, they stood next to other teams, they are as tall as their counterparts from the western countries,” Yao said.
”We have some athletes whose heights are close to two metres. From that perspective, we are almost as good as other athletes from countries such as the US. (Reuters)