Opinion Being Ye Shiwen
The swimmers ordeal shows Chinas athletes are demonised without proof
You know how the bored losers have been venting their frustration during the first week of the London Olympics? By doodling devils horns on the heads of Chinese champions. Sadly,this isnt just lazy,good-humoured caricature but an attempt to demonise achievers with the dark strokes of premature and unsubstantiated allegations.
So even before the 17-year-old Chinese sensation,Ye Shiwen,could touch the wall and set a new world record in the 200 metre medley,the four-stroke race that decides the most versatile swimmer of the Games,the commentators were dropping broad dope hints. Days after clearing her post-race drug tests,mandatory for all medal winners,Ye still gets conspiratorial glances from coaches,negative vibes from a few in the pool and,of course,bad press.
The attack is relentless. Latest reports concur that Ye could actually be genetically engineered at those never-seen-by-anyone laboratories in China where bio-chemists sit on the assembly line giving final touches to handmade athletes. Its open season out there as bizarre and unproven innuendos unfailingly surface each time a swimmer in red climbs the podium.
Strangely,when other teenage swimmers,mostly from United States,sliced several seconds from record books,the snide remarks were conspicuous by their absence. At the 2003 World Championships,when Michael Phelps,just 18,won four golds,two silvers and broke five world records,he was called a prodigy,not a phony. The story of the lovable teen,born with attention deficit disorder and raised by a single mother for most of his life,was lapped up by everyone. There was not a hint of doubt about the credibility of his achievement,nor was his character questioned. With his infectious goofy smile,he was the Forrest Gump who featured on feel-good womens glossies and sports bibles.
As for Ye,she isnt being seen as some charming Nemo or Little Mermaid,but as some evil hybrid fish spoiling the tank. The root cause of these hostilities,besides her nationality,is her acceleration on the home stretch during her medley win. Yes final burst,as some unidimensional number cruncher pointed out,was faster than the US mens swim team star Ryan Lochtes final 50 m in the 400 m freestyle.
Credible swimming columnists have written that Lochte,with a big lead and sure-shot victory,had slowed down while Ye had paced herself perfectly for the final push. They also quote Aussie great Ian Thorpe,who speaks about slashing off five seconds from his 400 m freestyle timing in the year before he turned 16. At 17,Ye too could be a growing girl peaking at the right time. But it is convenient to ignore these voices when you have decided the headline of the story without doing honest leg work or a unbiased statistical check in search of the truth.
A less-quoted and largely-ignored piece in the British media opens one eye to the world behind the Great Wall. Its an anonymous account by a British-born coach,who,after training five different Olympic teams,is now with the Chinese swimming squad in London. Chinese athletes train incredibly hard,harder than I can explain in words. I have never seen athletes train like this anywhere in the world. They have an unrelenting appetite for hard work,can (and will) endure more pain for longer than their western counterparts,will guarantee to turn up for practice every single time and give their all. A perfect catalyst to this attitude,he says,is a system that has world-class exclusive facilities for elite athletics and quick funding for gadgets or equipment.
When words like hard work and dedication come into the debate,the China-doubters change track. From calling Chinese athletes rogues they now term them robotic. If the swimmers are dope cheats,the divers and gymnasts are products of that ruthless and insensitive system that snatches toddlers from their parents and makes them stretch,starve and suffer. Dramatic pictures of wailing child athletes and matrons with iron in hand are suddenly splashed around the world before or during big events. This stereotypical portrayal of life in Chinese academies,not always backed with proof,presumably works at several levels. It shows the might of the most-feared opponents and provides a ready excuse for the impending annihilation of the less-prepared home team. Besides a dope-ridden sporting history,the Western world is full of traumatic stories of pushy parents,sadist coaches and cruel training methods but these are facts best left untouched.
When nothing works there is always the fear factor. Besides China,the sporting success of nations like North Korea,Iraq,Iran and Cuba can be dismissed by that one thoughtless line about the physical abuse that awaits them or their family in case they fail to deliver at the Games. Again,fact-check isnt a priority for such utterances.
China does have a dope past but cant we clap for its athletes when they win? And,yes,slam them if it is later found out that they reached the finish line by bending the rules. Cant we,for once,just say to Ye Shiwen: Yeah,she won?
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