Faster, Higher, Stronger may be the Olympic motto, but when 16-year-old Chinese Ye Shiwen improved her personal best by 5.36 seconds and broke the women’s 400-metre individual medley world record, there was no all round applause. Instead, some western swimming experts and commentators suspected she had used performance-enhancing drugs to help her pull off a stunning performance. The reason — she swam the last split faster than the first three, and in the last stretch of 50 metres she was faster than Ryan Lochte, the American gold medallist in the men’s 400-metre individual medley event. Many Chinese swimmers may have tested positive for doping in the past few years, but in her case the needle of suspicion refused to go away despite the post-race drug test returning negative. Ironically, not all breathtaking and unexpected wins aroused the same suspicion. Take the case of Ruta Meilutyte who won the gold medal in the 100 metres breaststroke. She is a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Plymouth, England, representing Lithuania, who came into the contest ranked 14th in the world. In contrast to Ye, “it is doubtful if any of [the other swimmers] had ever heard of her before this week,” a commentator in the Daily Telegraph noted. But “she has become one of the unexpected stars of the Olympics.” British newspapers heaped praise on her performance, but not a word on doping.
If the stark double standard displayed by the western media is not surprising, it is disturbing that Nature, one of the most reputed and respected popular science journals, also joined the chorus. The original subtitle of a news item it carried — “‘Performance profiling’ could help catch sports cheats” — which was later changed, along with Ye’s picture, was a clear give away of the intent. The story set out to “examine how science can help resolve debates over extraordinary performances.” But, much like the newspapers, it made a simplistic and scientifically invalid way of comparing the performance of the two athletes in just the last 50 metres of the race. It had cherry-picked the data, showed brazen disregard to the scientifically correct way of analysing the data, and ignored other vital details. For instance, other male swimmers too had clocked a faster speed than Lochte in that stretch of the race. As Lai Jiang from the University of Pennsylvania commented in the journal, failing to mention that Lochte was faster than Ye by 23.25 seconds overall is mischievous as it misleads the readers. Nature’s editor regretted the “absence of a more detailed discussion of the statistics,” but the regret came a week too late.
Keywords: London Olympics, Olympics 2012, Ye Shiwen, doping cases, Olympics doping, sports doping
Western media should wind their clocks a little back in time and
remember the tragic career end of US star athlete Marion Jones, who
admitted in 2007 of taking performance enhancing drugs during Summer
Olympics 2000. Good and Bad are two facets of humans and nobody should
be subjected to racially discriminated judgments. Ye Shiwan, has made
her country proud and she deserves to go into history books proud and
clean.
Ye Shiwan represents the evolution of a new sporting culture which China so successfully created two decades back when it abandoned its soviet style fixations and ushered in an era of scientific sports management initiating professionalism and commercialization of sporting activity.
Also the government of that country started a Physical Fitness Program in 1995 aimed to build, develop and sustain a sports cum health service system where all citizens were encouraged and made to take up sporting activities according to their choices and also enabled them to engage in various fitness regimens.
The gov. has built not only stadiums but also community fitness centers with world class facilities in cities and also in rural and remote areas.
Physical fitness has now become a way of life to the Chinese people. Success did not come to them easily, they earned them, thru sweat.
The Western bias and double standards are borne out of sheer ignorance, it is best to ignore and move on.
I wonder why this has been made the editorial. An analysis of say, the
President's Independence Day speech would have been better.
It is really sad thing leving doping charges on Ye Shiwan a teenager athlete,istead of applause some western newspapers and journal blaming her,but at the same time they are taking double stand about Lithuanian tinager Ruta Meilutyte's performance. It seemes that they have forgotten the actual intention behind this Olympic world contest that bringing all nations together and make a sense of oneness among them.
Apart from the Ye Shiwen case, if you were following the domestic BBC coverage of the 2012 Olympics, you would have thought it was an essentially a British sporting spectacular rather than an international athletic meet. Gloating over the British medal total took precedence over the BBC's much-vaunted claim of informing and educating the great British public.
it comes as no surprise that asian athletes are praised lesser than
their fairer skinned counterparts from europe. we saw the same when
people criticized kapil devs feat of breaking sir richard hadlees
record simply because he took a few tests longer than sir richard. and
when it comes to doping, it is not as if european athletes are
smelling of roses, as evidenced by the athens olympics. the mindset
is neo colonial. having said this, it should be borne in mind that the
asian people are a little more touchy, and we refuse to believe drug
tests and claim it is fabricated should the result go against us. knee
jerk reactions from both parties are best avoided.
It is common knowledge that using different yardsticks or displaying double standard is nothing new. There have been many such instances in the past. But,as candidly brought out by the editorial 'Pride and Prejudice", the reports, especially in the western media, which, out of possible prejudice, raised the suspicion that the Chinese swimmer Yi Shiwen, the gold medal winner in the women's 400-metre individual medley, might have made use of stimulant, were totally biased and unwarranted. Media reports will carry weight and the readers will continue to read them only when they are factual and totally unbiased.
It is time to call 'racial profiling' for what it is. Just as the Europeans subjugated Asians and Africans on skin color, they now use terms like 'drug use/steroids' to dismiss achievements by non-white caucasian groups. Witness the arrogant and presumptuous questions Usain Bolt faced , by western journalists after winning the 100 and 200 m.
Of course it is amusing that you presume, 'Nature' to be above this. It has a long and coarse history of racism in its editorial slant and publishing record.
It's disheartening to hear that instead of applauding athletes for
their overwhelming performances, they are being prejudiced for doing
it under the affect of illegitimate drugs. In a similar incident,
recently we have seen American veteran athlete Carl Lewis insinuating
that the incredible success of the Jamaican runners in the London
Olympics may have occurred because of loose Jamaican drug testing
procedure. Athletes take huge amount of pain in striving for
excellence in such competitions, and it is unfair to deride their
achievements by attributing them to drugs straightaway. I would
suggest that both people and media should refrain from making such
baseless comments before the matter is proved scientifically.
It is so difficult for the western countries to accept the fact that Asian especially Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc can break the record which was set by the sportsperson from western countries. There was no surprise in this news if Ye Shiwen comes from country like America. It's a wrong way of observing the performance in big events like Olympics where exception are always there. If America dominate most of the field doesn't mean that they can carry the same legacy forever. World change & the experts forget that while analyzing the performance with bullocks parameters. Its shameful thing to compare such a magnificent performance of Ye Shiwen with doping.
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