Mistrust won’t let China’s son shine
A dark cloud hangs over Sun Yang, and while the Asian nation celebrates its greatest swimmer, the world refuses to accept a champion who leaves so many questions unanswered
AS is the case in most democratic nations, Australians have a deep-seated mistrust, if not fear, of China.
I am not a Chinaphobe and cannot understand why so many Australians are unable to recognise that our continuing prosperity and employment rate is linked in large part to our growing trade relationship with the world’s most populous nation.
Having said that, the manner in which China expects other nations to either fit in with or ignore its own questionable standards when it comes to human rights, freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest is something that will always ensure that Beijing is regarded in the West with suspicion, if not hostility.
This week, a swimming pool provided the unlikely venue for this clash of cultures and ideologies to be played out.
Australians have instinctively hailed our swimmer Mack Horton as something of a hero after his exquisite up yours to Chinese 400m freestyle “champion” Sun Yang.
I have used quotation marks around the word “champion” because all of Yang’s sporting achievements deserve some cautious quotation marks inserted around them. The guy cannot be described with any confidence or accuracy as a champion.
He’s merely the latest questionable embodiment of what happens when a sporting governing body fails to recognise and expose an ugly secret lurking within, in much the same way cycling authorities did for so long with that discredited hero Lance Armstrong and others among his juiced-up brethren.
The extent of Sun’s misdemeanours has been somewhat clouded amid all the rage that followed Horton’s podium boycott and the protest staged in solidarity by Scotsman Duncan Scott after he was pipped in the 200m freestyle at the world championships in Gwangju on Tuesday.
Yes, Sun is a convicted drug cheat, although the swimming governing body FINA now accepts he cheated by accident.
At the 2014 Chinese swimming championships, Sun tested positive to trimetazidine, a heart stimulant that was only added to the banned list four months earlier.
Sun’s case was heard by the Chinese Swimming Federation, and they actually found him guilty. But they accepted his explanation that trimetazidine was an ingredient in a medication he had been previously prescribed by an independent doctor for a genuine heart condition.
In fairness, the explanation sounded plausible enough and peak doping body WADA accepted Sun’s doping was accidental.
It is in relation to the fresh charges Sun has hanging over his head that things start to get really sketchy.
Say what you like about Shane Warne’s dear old mum, who infamously copped the rap after she inadvertently slipped a proscribed diuretic to the spin king, which saw him rubbed out of cricket for a year in 2003, Sun Yang’s mother is in a league of her own when it comes to the doping question.
Sun faces claims that last year he and his mother conspired to destroy and hide blood samples during a latenight visit by independent drug testers while he was competing in the Zhejiang province.
International Doping Tests and Management, contracted by FINA, arranged to visit Sun at the Athletes’ Village on September 3 to collect out-ofcompetition blood and urine samples to test for performance-enhancing substances.
We have been here before in sport, be it the pathetic excuses we have heard from so many cyclists, or the laughable claims from the likes of Maria Sharapova about her use of the banned drug meldonium on the questionable grounds that she was worried she might develop diabetes one day.
To that end, it’s completely understandable that a straightshooting bloke like Mack Horton would want to take a stand by refusing to stand next to Sun.
The nature of the vitriol he has sustained since is a pretty compelling insight into the collectivist mindset and unyielding respect for authority that makes China what it is.
By refusing to stand next to Sun, the ripples from Mack Horton’s actions may ultimately extend well beyond the pool.
“Ripples from Mack Horton’s actions may ultimately extend well beyond the pool”