The 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen, whose triumph in the women's 400m individual medley has been branded "suspicious" by a leading US coach, maintained her crushing form in the 200m IM by setting an Olympic record as she cruised to the final.
Ye, who swam the last 50m freestyle of her 400m event in a quicker time than the men's champion, Ryan Lochte, won her semi-final by almost a second and a half from Australia's Alicia Coutts. Her time of 2min 08.39sec was six hundredths of a second quicker than the Olympic record of Stephanie Rice, another Australian, set in Beijing. Rice was fifth in Ye's heat, almost two and a half seconds slower.
The Chinese teenager ended the initial butterfly leg lagging slightly, but gradually inexorably pulled away through the backstroke, breaststroke and – again – particularly in the final, freestyle length.
Ye's 400m triumph prompted John Leonard, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, to describe her performance as "unbelievable". Leonard said: "We want to be very careful about calling it doping. The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, 'unbelievable', history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved."
Leonard, also the executive director of the USA Swimming Coaches Association, likened Ye's performance to "some old East German swimmers".
Asked by reporters about his comments following her semi-final, Ye skirted the question, saying only: "I can just carry on and try my best to win."
However, after her 200m heat earlier in the day, where she was 1.61sec faster than anyone else in the field, Ye was more specific on the issue. "There is absolutely no problem with doping," she said. "The Chinese team has always had a firm policy about anti-doping."
After the 200m heats Rice conceded that Ye's freestyle leg was extraordinarily strong. "She comes home like a gun in freestyle," Rice said. "I was way behind. It was out of control. If I was up with her I would have had no chance."
