To the confusion of many viewers shortly before the start of the men’s 1500 free, the favorite Sun Yang was nowhere to be found.
Scheduled to swim in lane 3, Sun had swum a 14:55.11 in prelims for the third position in the final. The Chinese distance stalwart has already won the 400 and 800 free, coming back on 1500 top finals seed Gregorio Paltrinieri (Italy) hard in the 800 free to win it. While Sun just missed out on gold in the 200 free, he was still looking to become a triple gold medalist through the distance freestyle events.
Sun is the world record holder in the 1500 after swimming an insanely fast time of 14:31.02 at the London Olympics in 2012, and he was expected to at least fight with Paltrinieri for most of the race, and probably win it. Instead, only seven swimmers are currently contending for the title as no alternate showed up to take Sun’s place.
I feel sympathy for Sun, the male swimmer of the Games, even without the 1500 points he would undoubtedly have won in it.
I find it uderstandable that an elite swimmer such as Sun, in their final warmup for a taxing event likke the 1500, would be annoyed that a much slower swimmer was getting in his way and disturbing the rhythm and equinimity of his final pre-race preparations. Why didn’t she just give way or move to another lane?
The fact that she was not herself preparing for a race, but just doing a routine training session is even more questionable, and must have been even more annoying for Sun.
Not having full fluency in a… Read more »
I feel sympathy for Sun, the male swimmer of the Games, even without the 1500 points he would undoubtedly won in it.
I find it uderstandable that an elite swimmer such as Sun, in their final final warmup for a taxing event likke the 1500, would be annoyed that a much slower swimmer was getting in his way and disturbing the rhythm and equinimity of his final pre-race preparations. Why didn’t she just give way or move to another lane? The fact that she was not herself preparing for a race, but just doing a routine training session is even more questionable, and must have been even more annoying for Sun.
Not having full fluency in a common… Read more »
apparently he was perfectly fine when he received his award from fina for male swimmer of the meet.
I’m wondering why he didn’t call an ambulance and get straight to hospital.
Have you ever had a physical problem where you didn’t necessarily wanna go to the hospital for it but also knew you couldn’t do your best athletically either that day?
So how does a noshow win swimmer of the Meet!!!! That is really weird.
Visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimetazidine to learn about the drug Sun Yang is apparently taking. It is not available in the US or Canada. I’m no doctor but it strikes me as something that might give someone a physiological edge in competition. Meanwhile, it’s very sad that Sun did not scratch in time to enable an alternate to compete. Maybe we’ll find out that he had a sudden, debilitating cramp . . . or not!
Los Feliz — so long as he is tested today along with every other athlete in the event, I have no issue with it. This is not merely unusual it is unique. I have never in 40 years in this sport seen or heard of a no show athlete to the blocks of a World or Olympic final. He didn’t scratch earlier, no medical problems were reported earlier and all athletes from all federations are provided with disclosure paperwork if there is a valid earlier prescribed medical issue.
Nothing I wrote or inferred is unfair. And it is a cop out to state that Chines Le swimmers didn’t get the FINA WADA drug memo in a timely manner in… Read more »
How do you know Sun Yang is not tested today? Just because you speculate something does not make it truth.
Sun Yang’s medical problem was reported in 2007. In fact his provincial team publishes most of the first hand info at a timely manner, which is then reinterpreted by the Chinese media, speculated by the readers, then get re-reported by English media.
The swimming world, as it is today, is stilling using English language as official language. This is not only hard for non-English speaking world to understand, but also Sun Yang’s managers showed lack of understanding of the processes. What I pointed out earlier is the Chinese manual sent to all doctors and athletes at March 1st of… Read more »
“This is not only hard for non-English speaking world to understand, ”
Oh, BS.
I’ve done business in China for a decade. If you have a college degree, your English is fine. That’s not true in some parts of the world (Russia and South America, especially) but its certainly true in China.
Rest easy, Joel. The winner of the best male swimmer of the meet was tested. I’m no expert on drug testing but I doubt that not showing up for your 4th race gets you off the hook for being tested for the other 3 medals you won.
If FINA had any cojones, he’d be peeing in a cup right now. But we know how FINA loves the Chinese federation and the money they put up to host events so it’s not gonna happen.
Uh huh… you think he didn’t get tested for this competition, the one he won 2 golds and a silver at? You think that by skipping a third race, he got off the hook to be tested?