HONG KONG, Aug 2 — China’s state media, athletes and netizens rallied to support Olympic swimming champion Pan Zhanle after critics, including an Australian swim commentator, said his world record swim in the 100m freestyle is not “humanly possible”.
Zhanle smashed his own 100m freestyle world record, shaving 0.40 seconds off the previous mark he set at the World Championships in Doha in February, to humble rivals including Australia’s Kyle Chalmers and Romania’s David Popovici.
The 19-year old finished in 46.60 seconds to take China’s first swimming gold medal at the Paris Olympics. His win came after he “completed rigorous doping test programs prior to and during the games with zero positive results”, the China Daily said today.
Zhanle said he took 21 doping tests from May to July prior to the games. “I cooperated with all the testing procedures and stayed confident that I am competing fair and clean,” he told the newspaper.
“I did a lot of aerobics and endurance training to strengthen my push and kick in the final split. We have also adopted a scientific underwater monitoring and analysing system to review our techniques and strokes, so that we can train better and more effectively.”
Australian coach and commentator Brett Hawke posted on Instagram that “it’s not humanly possible to beat that field” and that the swim was “not real life. Not in that pool, against that field”.
Hawke’s comments were widely shared on Weibo, with one user commenting: “It’s so cool to see them incompetent, angry and breaking their defences.”
“He is praising us, saying that position is impossible, but sorry, we did it,” said another.
The Chinese swim team has been under intense scrutiny since revelations in April that 23 of the country’s swimmers tested positive for a banned heart medication in 2021 but were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) accepted findings of a China probe that the results were due to contamination from a hotel kitchen, and an independent review backed Wada’s handling of the case.
A World Aquatics audit concluded there was no mismanagement or cover-up by the governing body. Zhanle’s name was not among China’s swimmers listed in the reports by the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD.
Chinese swimmer Zhang Yufei, who won bronze in the women’s 200m butterfly, responded to questions about Zhanle during a press conference yesterday.
“Why are Chinese athletes questioned when they swim so fast? Why didn’t anyone dare to question Phelps when he won?”
— Reuters
