The 2016 Chinese spring National Championships and Olympic Trials begin Sunday in Foshan, but will be without the country’s biggest sports star: distance swimmer Sun Yang.
Chinese media is saying that this won’t affect Sun’s chances at Olympic qualifying, because he already earned Olympic qualifying times in the 200, 400, and 1500 meter freestyles at last summer’s World Championships.
Sun’s competition schedule has been inconsistent since his notorious ending to the World Championships in Kazan. On the final day of that meet, Sun both is alleged to have gotten in a physical altercation with a female Brazilian swimmer in the warm-up pool, and then he skipped the final of the 1500 free where he was a favorite to win for unrelated issues (the federation claimed it had to with a lingering heart condition).
In January of this year, Sun pulled out of the Aquatic Super Series in Australia, where he trains, citing a foot injury,
In a press release sent out by the Zhejiang Vocational College of Sports, they said that in order to avoid reinjuring his healing damaged appendages, Sun decided to continue his preparations for the Rio Olympics in Hangzhou instead.
Sun injured his foot in a training accident on January 29th while in Australia, and specifically injured his 5th metatarsal.
Sun’s resume includes 2012 Olympic gold medals in the 400 and 1500 freestyles, as 7 long course World Championships and the current World Record in the men’s 1500 long course meter freestyle
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Sun Yang’s twitter with information in his injuries.
https://twitter.com/sunyang1201
Note to Braden Keith/SwimSwam: Every time I click up vote on here, the tally automatically switched each time to 0 up votes and then it just says “NAN” instead of tallying the down votes. So I stopped voting. Virus?
So Sun Yang will not be taking any public drug tests this week, I suppose.
Do you think this changes anything? He already got banned and almost noone noticed it, i think he will be in Rio anyway, no matter what he does in the next couple of months. Some very important officials obviously want all the top swimmers in Rio, no matter what.
I never thought that i would say this, but FINA should be a bit more like IAAF …
Speaking of Wang he unofficially broke his WJR in the 100 breast with a 59.64
Ye Shiwen posted a 4:50 in the final of the 400IM for 7th.
It was ugly!
I forgot Canada for next week.
Wow! The world rankings are gonna change a little bit.
And Zhen, yes, keep posting news about Chinese swimming.
I already wanted to mention it. The canadian trials will be the most interesting for me, especially on the womens side world rankings will change a lot. At the end of next week world rankings will look very different, from the “big” nations only Hungary/GB/Italy/Germany/Russia and USA will be missing.
Zhen, keep on providing info for the community here.
Next week Chinese, Australian and Japan national championships?
It’s gonna be fast.