Ye Shiwen - drug cheat or all-time great?

By Adrian Meredith

VICTORIA, Australia (TheSportsNext) July 31, 2012: Ye Shiwen, the 16 year old female Chinese swimmer who just won gold at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the 400 metre Individual Medley in Swimming, is being widely accused of being a drug cheat, with suspicions initially raised by the USA swimming coach.

So is she a drug cheat?

The argument that she is a drug cheat is based on her huge improvement. After all, she has improved a massive 5 seconds on her personal best since the last time she raced, going from a ranking of 9th or 10th in the world - just missing out on the final - to winning the gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics and breaking the world record.

Combined with this is the fact that she is Chinese and in the 1990s there was widespread state-sponsored drug cheating in women's swimming, and the suspicion is that this has happened again.

One thing about the 1990s drug cheating is that the women were hugely muscular. These were nobodies who went from being ranked 100th in the world to winning Olympic gold medals and breaking world records. They didn't look like women even really.

Ye Shiwen, in comparison, won the Asian Championships at the age of 14. She is now 16. You would expect most girls to massively improve from the age of 14 to the age of 16, as female swimmers don't hit their peak until the early 20s usually. Yet at the age of 14 she had already won the Asian Championships. Not the underage Asian Championships but the one for all ages - being the best swimmer in the whole of Asia, of any age. She also came 2nd in the world championships in 2010, still aged 14.

In 2011, aged 15, she won the World Championships.

So, while this 5 second improvement is a massive improvement, she has been doing incredibly well for c.

So if she was a drug cheat, she would have to have been cheating since 2010, or at least at these major championships.

As for the 5 second improvement, Australian Stephanie Rice improved by 6 seconds in the same event in the 2008 Olympics, to win the gold medal and break the world record. Nobody suspected her of doing anything wrong.

The suspicion about her last 50 metres being extra fast was because she was behind and had to fight extra hard to win. Her coach claimed that that is why it was faster than the winner of the men's final, as in that case he was already leading.

I haven't seen the drug tests so can't comment for sure but it seems that the major reason for accusing her of being a drug cheat is that she is Chinese.

If that is enough to convict someone of being a drug cheat, then all Pakistan cricketers fix matches and all Muslim Arabs are terrorists. And that kind of thing sets a dangerous precedent that I for one don't want to follow.

Instead, I'd rather focus on the name. How much does her name, Ye Shiwen, look and sound like "Yes, She Win". Even if you put the "Ye" at the end (as Ye is her surname) it becomes "She Win Ye", which isn't much different.