Record swimmer faces de Bruin comparison

John Leonard, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, last night compared Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen’s winning performance in the women’s 400m individual medley to Irish swimmer Michelle Smith.

Smith, now de Bruin, won gold in the same event at the 1996 Olympics but was later banned from swimming for four years in 1998 for tampering with a urine sample. She has always denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

Ye stunned observers over the weekend when she set the first swimming world record of these Olympics, and in doing so swam the final 50m freestyle faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte managed in his final leg, when he won the same race in the men’s event.

She swam the last 50m in 28.93 seconds, while Lochte swam it in 29.10.

“We want to be very careful about calling it doping,” Leonard said.

“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. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of the 400m individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta.

“Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping.”

Interest was spiked in Ye when she was more than seven seconds faster in the 400m individual medley than she had been in the equivalent race of the World Championships last year.

While Leonard accepted that such improvement was feasible, he described the final 100m as “impossible”.

“To swim three other splits at the rate that she did, which was quite ordinary for elite competition, and then unleash a historic anomaly, it is just not right. I have heard commentators saying, ‘well she is 16, and at that age amazing things happen’. Well yes, but not that amazing, I am sorry.”

Meanwhile, the coaches of another teenage swimming sensation, new gold medallist Ruta Meilutyte, have said she has been destined for the top of the podium since displaying early signs of her potential.

The 15-year-old won the women’s 100m breaststroke last night under the Lithuanian flag, the country where she grew up, but she is also a hero in Britain, where she has made a new home.

Meilutyte and her father arrived in England three years ago to allow the swimming prodigy to train for the Olympics.