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.
