Phelps greatest Olympian as Ye claims second gold

Four years after he climbed to the top of Olympic achievement, Michael Phelps took the last step he needed to reach the absolute peak.

The greatest swimmer of all time became the most decorated Olympian of all time when he won a record 19th Olympic medal at the London Games last night.

With a little help from his American friends, Phelps won his first gold medal in London in the 4x200 metres freestyle less than an hour after a shock defeat in the 200 butterfly, an event he has dominated for over a decade.

His team-mates threw their arms around him and the crowd at London’s Aquatic Centre rose to their feet to witness the coronation of the Olympic king.

The record Phelps broke was held by Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who won the last of her 18 Olympic medal at Tokyo in 1964.

Until Phelps surfaced, no-one had come close to breaking her record in almost half a century but now the torch has been passed to the 27-year-old from Baltimore.

“I thank those guys for helping me get to this moment,’’ he said. “I just wanted to hold on. I thank them for allowing me this moment.’’

Meanwhile Chinese teenage sensation Ye Shiwen continued her rapid rise by winning the 200 individual medley.

The 16-year-old followed up her jaw-dropping win in the 400 medley with another amazing display of power and perfect technique though her wins have been mired in suspicion, such has been the ease at which they came.

She has been forced to fend off questions and insinuations of cheating in a doping row that has no solid basis in fact, yet threatens to overshadow the early stages of the Games and a thrilling few days in the pool.

Privately, her 396-strong team and the big Chinese media contingent at the Olympic Park in east London are furious.

Ye, they say, has been unfairly targeted by the media in a way that athletes from other countries have not.

Xu Qi, head of the Chinese swimming team, summed up the mood in the camp.

“Ye Shiwen has been seen as a genius since she was young, and her performance vindicates that,” he said.

“If there are suspicions, then please lay them out using facts and data. Don’t use your own suspicions to knock down others. This shows lack of respect for athletes and for Chinese swimming.”

Doubts over Ye’s display, and whether it was humanly possible without performance-enhancing drugs, surfaced after her stunning 400 individual medley display on Saturday which swiftly became the talk of the Olympic village.

She trailed American world champion Elizabeth Beisel after the penultimate breaststroke leg before a devastating finish over the final two freestyle lengths.

Ye covered the penultimate one in 29.75 seconds, faster than Phelps in the men’s medley final, and the last in 28.93, quicker than Ryan Lochte did in winning the men’s event.

She also became the first female swimmer to break a world record since the ban on hi-tech suits, taking more than a second off the previous benchmark.

“Interesting” and “insane” were two words used to describe the race by former Olympians quoted in the New York Times, although many coaches and athletes rallied behind Ye yesterday as the furore grew.

Question marks appeared in newspaper columns, as in the Guardian’s: “Ye Shiwen’s world record Olympic swim: brilliant, or too good to be true?”

BBC presenter Clare Balding asked aloud how many questions would be asked, and media outlets picked up remarks John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association.

“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.’’

He cited the example of Irish swimmer Michelle Smith, who won gold in the same event as Ye at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics but was banned from swimming for four years in 1998 for tampering with a drug test.

Ye, nicknamed the “young general” at home, has brushed aside doping suspicions.

“My results come from hard work and training and I would never use any banned drugs,” she said.

“The Chinese people have clean hands.”