This New York Times article was sent to me this morning by a gentleman that swims with SCAQ. It's regarding a Chinese swimmer, Liu Zige, who came out of nowhere on the international scene and totally ripped up the field in the 200meter butterfly by taking gold and violating the world record by more than a second. Then to make it more mysterious, Jiao Liuyang comes in second swimming under world record time as well.Okay, so now the accusations: "...Not rational" was one of them, "...I’d never heard of either of them," BUT, the New York Times is offering a viable reason. Snippet from the article: "... more likely explanation for Liu’s success, however, is that she is an exceedingly successful product of Project 119, the government training program that uses limitless resources and relentless training to increase the country’s precious medal intake.
Started in 2002, the program’s name alludes to the additional number of gold medals China hoped to win if it focused on sports in which it traditionally lagged. Swimming was one of those sports. ..." [Link]
Okay, with a Chinese population of 1.3-kajillion, there has to be a Michael Phelps in there somewhere. Heck, the place is a petri-dish of natural selection talent from Yao Ming, Zhang Ziyi (Memoirs of a Geisha actress) to chess player Zhang Zhong. There is a lot of talent there.
4 comments:
I don't think we may ever see another Michael Phelps. There will be those who might come close, but his talent and dominance of the sport will (in my opinion) be unsurpassed.
I don't know Charlie, I think some sort of genetically enhanced Chimera will pop up.
Its a mistake to underestimate the effect of having a giant population base to seek out individuals who are predisposed to excellence in any field. It does make a difference. There should be a Michael Phelps, or a Michael Klim(great swimmer but not a Phelps) in a country which is giving athletic opportunities to so many children. The key factors are a large population and creating opportunities for a large number of children. For every 10,000 completely mediocre swimmers like me(it is probably a lot more but I'm guessing), there should be an Olympian and for every 200 Olympians there should be one Spitz/Phelps.
Having said that, I have also read that this was the first meet at which Chinese swimmers wore the new LZR suits from Speedo so that would also be a significant factor.
Its still hard not to be skeptical though about some of the Chinese swims, and other swimmers. The speed of the swimmers is staggering. In the 100 meter free, it took a :48.09 to qualify for finals. The two swimmers who tied for 1st were :48.43 at the Melbourne World Champs last year. In the 1500, the winning time in 2007 at Melbourne was 14;45, and 2nd was 14:47. In Beijing the 8th qualifier for finals was 14:49. Those improvements are in a single year.
Stephanie Rice seems like a great swimmer--4:41 last year and 4:29 this year in the 400 IM. I don't have any reason to suspect her of anything (except excellence) but that drop(12 seconds in a single year) is as dramatic as the Chinese improvement. the past history of the Chinese certainly helps to create the concern and suspicousness but its not fair to look only to their improvements as "evidence" of extralegal reasons for their improvement unless you apply similar scrutiny to other swimmers as well.
Bill Ireland
Phelps does seem to be a bit of a genetic leap as far as swimming is concerned. There must be more like him though, the problem is finding them. Most of them are probably stacking shelves, or fitting curtains, or doing other jobs where long arms are an advantage. The real trick is to find children with similar genetics, and then encourage them to swim. Not an easy task!
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