SIXTEEN-year-old Chinese swimming prodigy Ye Shiwen categorically denied doping after British media raised suspicions about her world record-breaking start to the London Olympics.
The 16-year-old Chinese swimmer, whose final 50m in the 400m medley shocked the world when she swam faster than American superstar Ryan Lochte for his final 50m on the same night in downing Michael Phelps.
With the swim, Ye took nearly seven seconds off her time at last year's world championships.
She won this morning's 200m individual medley semi-final with the fastest time of the year, easily eclipsing Australians Stephanie Rice and Alicia Couts.
But tongues, including Lochte's, are wagging around Ye at London's Olympic pool because of China's drug-tainted history in swimming from the 1990s.
Lochte swam his closing lap of freestyle in 29.10sec. But here's the jaw-dropper - the high school girl from China attached an outboard and blitzed the final lap in 28.93, swimming over the top of the world record line.
It is the first time in Olympic swimming history that a female has swum a faster closing lap than the men's gold medallist.
Ye shattered Rice's mark in the women's 400m individual medley by more than a second, including an astonishing final lap which was faster than US winner Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps in the men's competition.
"Insane," was Rice's comment after the race. "I mean I didn't see it, I was way over and behind, so I didn't really see her coming home, but that split coming home was out of control."
with that," she said.
Ye was put on the spot after leading British media pounced on her performances, pointing to China's record of state-sponsored doping in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Ye's amazing time for freestyle leg scarcely credible," read a headline in The Times, which noted that the youngster was a former team-mate of Chinese swimmer Li Zhesi, who was barred from the Olympics over blood-booster EPO.
"Chinese swimming has such a shameful history of doping that any remarkable achievement by one of its athletes is inevitably met with cynicism," remarked the Daily Telegraph.
"A whiff of turtle blood in the water," added the mass-market Daily Mail, referring to the infamous supplements given to China's drug-tainted athletes in the 1990s.
Gold medal-winning icon Michael Phelps, in the same race as Lochte, had to process his own comparison. Ye swam her second last lap in 29.75, faster than the superstar American's by 0.13 seconds.
Female medley swimmers don't normally go close to breaking the minute on the final 100m of freestyle, yet Ye blitzed it in 58.68 en route to the first world record set by a female since the end of the supersuit era at the beginning 2010.
US swim team men's coach Gregg (Gregg) Troy added: "Heck of a swim. You guys can do the research. I think that's probably the fastest women's split ever."
The ugly background of doping in Chinese swimming in the 1990s remains a lingering stain on world sport.
Former breaststroke swimmer Yuan Yuan brought the systematic doping to the spotlight. In 1998, she was stopped with 13 vials of human growth hormone in her bag at Sydney Airport on her trip to the world championships in Perth.
(LondonNow)
