Boy, did Leonard really step in it. A reader sent me this one.
From The Next Web Asia:
"... The Olympic brouhaha surrounding Chinese swimming sensation Ye Shiwen just ratcheted up several notches. Chinese Web celebrity and former Google China head Kaifu Lee temporarily posted on his much-followed microblog account the personal information of John Leonard, the Team USA swimming coach who had questioned the legitimacy of Ye’s record-breaking performance. ..."
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Right now everything that is "John Leonard" is on the radar. Page views to my scuffle with John Leonard here at the blog are unusually high. I think it is high time that Leonard apologizes before his reputation becomes more infamous.
This just in, Leonard won't step down or apologize and he has even stepped up his comments. He gave these comments to Yahoo Sports in an interview:
"If people don't speak out when they see something suspicious, the public is going to think nonsensical splits were real," Leonard said. "Then doping is going to have free reign for anything we don't know about right now. ..."
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How about that last sentence? Then it gets worse. Go read the article and face palm.
12 comments:
What a shock, he keep upping the ante:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--u-s--swimming-director-steps-up-chinese-doping-allegations.html
I am astonished - We will soon here a flushing sound as FINA declares him persona non grata and he goes down the toilet
The Chinese swimming/diving program smear campaign continues with the article about diver Wu Minxia.
This article is literally being plagiarized, word for word, by every news reporter without any reference to the original reporter.
Who is the original reporter?
There is NO website, English or Chinese, for the Shanghai Morning Post. Where's the source?
Story breaks out about Ye Shiwen before the 200 IM.
Story breaks out about Wu Minxia before the 3m platform diving.
How do you convince the world that this guy is an insignificant coach with a fancy sounding title? He coaches for his wife/girlfriends team. How tough is it to land that job?
John Leonard, although well known, is insignificant in the swimming world. He has managed to attach himself, like a parasite or fungus, to important organizations. But once parasites grow, fester, and stink, people want to get rid of them. Maybe USA Swimming and FINA will recognize him for what he is.
In the U.S. anyone can form a corporation with the word American or World in the name. It doesn't mean you speak for any official organization. But most American coaches send him money, and most coaches believe he holds the rights to SwimAmerica name, because he tells people that and they believe. He's basically a con man.
Where is his home address published?
Would you like to send some links or news outlets so I can compare the sentence structure and run with it?
It was published on Twitter and taken down. I believe the screen shot is up at some sites in China.
Hey Tony:
What I am most astonished about is that John Leonard has a Twitter account?
This a man that told the New York Times that in his coaching, he tries to stay as far away from technology as possible!
Who would be interested in following anything he has to say???
If you are going to eviscerate Leonard at least know who you are talking about. Some on this blog may, but many others obviously do not. His primary job for many years has not been as a coach (when he did act primarily as a coach I believe he did produce a US Olympian) but as executive director of the American Swim Coaches Association, the primary national professional organization for swim coaches in the US, providing training, clinics and other services to the coaching community, as well as coordination with coach groups in other countries. They provide a voice for professional coaches in organizations which run the sport (FINA; USA Swimming for the US) which have otherwise been dominated by volunteers for a century. The board of directors to which he reports has for decades been made up of a Who's Who of Hall of Fame coaches.
John has obviously never been one to shy away from making comments found controversial in some circles. Tony Austin is not the sole member of the club with whom he's had his run-ins, but for over a quarter of a century, at least as to any comments about concerns over drug use in our sport, he's generally eventually been shown to be correct.
There is racism (expressing attitues, making decisions or taking actions base on race) involved in this controversy but not from the people expressing skepticism by pointing out empirical numerical anomalies in the racing as a basis for concern about PED use. It is the people who, whithout even a shred of proof, jump straight to the, "they're just saying this because she's Chinese; they wouldn't say this if it were an American," poosition, haughtily claiming "proof" in drug tests that come back negative, who exhibit racism. Negative test results are the furthest thing from conclusive, just as they were for so many years for athletes later found to have been artificially enhanced. Any concern expressed this way is NOT a personal slam at Ye Shiwen. We have found over time that, while many did know, many others of the drugged champions of the past may not have even known they were cheating, as they were administered "assistance" either by their coach or by government/federation scientific support staff, which the athlete may not have known was a drug violation. As noted elsewhere in this string, negative testing does not prove an athlete is clean so much as positive test show an athlete is not clean, subject to any appropriate due process appeal, of course.
As to the enhanced controversy over Ye Shiwen after Leonard's comments, please understnand it is not a basis for skepticism solely when a 16 year old improves by 5 seconds in a year over a 400 distance. It is not a basis for skepticism solely because a world record is broken. But when multiple observable parts of the process begin to match patterns from previous "dark days" of our sport, expecially from an area with a known history of PED,it is an irresponsible abdication of our joint obligation to protect the health of our sport to not at least objectively consider the facts. These numbers do not necessarily lead directly to a PED conclusion, but they certainly do fairly open the door for consideration of that possibility.
The following was cut off from previous post as the total exceeded character limit: Name-calling toward numerically based skepticism is so reminiscent of the treatment received by "Surly Shirley," who we now know was simply cheated out of being one the greatest Olympic heroines in history. It is so similar to Michelle Smith in 1996, it hurts. Many from Ireland, blinded by national pride, expressed the same, "You're only saying that because she's Irish; you wouldn't be saying that if she was American" response to any questioning. The fact that, after years of hard training with good clubs she had solid career but no Olympic medal caliber performances until she married and was trained by a track and field (shot/discus) athlete, who already had a history of drug suspensions not uncommon in that arena, made no impact on Irish fans who were both fanatical and jealous in the face of skepticism. Before Smith even reached the finish of her 400 Free in Atlanta US coach Richard Quick knew something was up based on her 7th length exposion, not the last lap where she was able to comfortably get home on the lead. Sounds similar to what Leonard describes above, doesn't it? Who ended up being proven accurate?
It is amazing how blinded, by lack of knowledge, jealousy, denial and other emotions, people can be in their desire to attribute terrible motives to skeptical Americans who simply set out numbers to support their positions, like John has done.
Lets look rationally at some numbers. You draw you own conclusion ... but don't just cry ugly American racist and end objective analysis.
Ye's last two 50s in the 400 IM final were :29.75 (hand touch to foot touch) and :28.93 (foot touch to hand touch).
Her freestyle legs in prelims/semis/finals of the 200 IM were :30.73, :30.59 and :29.32 (all hand touch to hand touch). Remember she only won over Couts by .55 so she had to stretch out to the :29.32 to affirm her win. If you are fair, Leonard's comments smack of ... accuracy.
Compare her hand touch to foot touch 7th length in the 400 IM,
:29.75, to the Men's final of the 200 IM and you see last 50s (hand touch to hand touch - inherently quicker than hand to foot) of
:29.45 on Thiago Pereria (400 IM silver medalist who was in the hunt for a medal in the 200 at that point and thus certainly giving his all, not backing off), :29.55 on Diebler and :30.02 on James Goddard.
With a small hand/foot touch turn adjustment, Ye essentially beat 3 of the male finalists 200 IM in the Olympic Games, all in their final race to the wall at the end of their Olympic final 200 race, with her 7th lap of a 400 IM, when she still wasn't even to the point for the drive for the finish.
More directly, the comparison to Lochte got a lot of press, but he in fact at least beat Ye over the last 100 by .03, even though he appeared to be cruising the last 20 meters with his substantial lead. And he did at least beat Ye on her vaunted 7th lap. :29.55 (fastest 7th lap among the men) to ;29.75. But among the other 7? She had a faster 7th lap than 5 of them (i.e. Phelps was :29.88)and the two that beat her did so by 0.07 and 0.04.
If this raises no skepticism in your mind, without suggesting any untoward motives, you are close to or past brain dead.
And another factor that amazes me .... She is SO remarkable in freestyl at the end of her IMs. Where are her comparable med-distance Freestyle races? Comes across as hidden a bit, doesn't it? Why?
She is a wonderful swimmer with a beautiful balanced and efficient set of strokes stroke, especially in the freestyle on the end of her IM races. She has clearly been coached extremely well. She does not move brutishly through the water as do some others about whom PED questions have been raised. It is a joy to watch her move through the water when she's rolling. But ... numbers speak without attitude. I hope they simply represent a trancendant new star rather than ... something else.
Who is John Leonard? I will let his own words tell you in a deposition in the next day or two.
Get this straight: I berated Leonard for attacking a 16-year-old girl in the press with caustic, rhetorical questions, accusing her of doping without any evidence whatsoever. Then I added that bringing his unmeasured opinions to the press rather than doing so quietly to the professionals at WADA, the IOC who could have told him she was clean was ill mannered.
I slammed him for making the sport of swimming look as dirty as cycling when it is NOT! I called it "killing the category" look it up.
I slammed him for speaking for US Swimming who immediately sent out a press release basically stating "John who? He does not speak for us!..."
I grant that I made a mistake thinking there is a connection between USA Swimming and John Leonard but there is no denying that Leonard is intertwined with USA Swimming via ASCA hence the appearance of Leonard speaking as a surrogate.
Finally get this straight, My harsh opinions toward Leonard's shrill accusations mirror those of the IOC, FINA, the USOC, and 98% of The Guardian readers.
As for Shirley Babishoff: John Leonard is NO Shirley Babaishoff.
Those two long comments sounded like they were written by Leonard himself. Does he now have to defend himself?
He is a bureaucrat. If he coached any Olympians, it was probably at one of his clinics.
That's a really long confusing explanation of the Ye Shiwen race, and I'm not sure why it's on this post. But if anyone needs an explanation, Stephen Colbert gave a better one:
"Shiwen, she won, and she's suspiciously not American".
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