Sports thread: Everything sport related here.

[Quickie]

Well of course some are being critical of Australian swimming authorities now because you would lose all credibility continually taking the hypocritical position. It's like being sorry after you were caught doing wrong. Even Horton's statement rides the middle of a canned lawyer answer not defending nor admitting hypocrisy. I was reading a summary from an Associated Press article of the events of the World Championship and they mention the Horton protest against Sun but guess what...? No mention of Shayna Jack being exposed as a drug cheat. I didn't watch the World Championship but I read the Chinese in the stands were a loud bunch there after the Jack revelation. Normally they would paint the Chinese as being rude but I never came across any suggestion because everyone knows the Chinese have that right after the outlandish hypocrisy. The Chinese should be unleashing hell after this especially on the Australian team.

I would smash samples too if someone claiming to be an official doing random drug tests doesn't show credentials. They could taint the samples themselves. They don't believe they would do that like they would never take PEDs. They want everyone to believe that Jack didn't do it on purpose and someone else spiked her supplements but no one would ever do that to the Chinese... You don't think some tabloid would be low enough to try something like that?

The officials were coming in without following the proper procedures as basic as having the credentials. How can they be trusted of following the procedures just so they don't mess up the samples?

 

[taxiya]

Sun has been taking the mediation since 2008. 5-6 years later, the medication was put on the ban list.
All Sun has to do then is to apply for exemption which he would have gotten and did.
I do not see any reason why he would have take the medication while knowing about the ban and then lied about it, because that make no sense.

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NOVEMBER 24, 2014 / 3:35 PM / 5 YEARS AGO
China's Sun served three-month ban for doping test

(Reuters) - China’s world and Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang served a three-month ban earlier this year after testing positive for a banned stimulant, the China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) said on Monday.

The agency said Sun had tested positive for trimetazidine, a substance normally used to treat angina. The stimulant was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) banned list this year.

“I have taken many doping tests during years of training and competition and I had never failed one before,” Sun told China’s official Xinhua news agency.

“I was shocked and depressed at that time, but at the same time it made me cherish my sporting life even more. I will take it as a lesson and be more careful in the future.”

CHINADA said Sun tested positive in May during the national swimming championships and although the result was “not very serious” it still warranted a penalty.

Sun was also fined 5,000 RMB ($816) while officials from his provincial swim team were also handed unspecified penalties.

“Sun Yang in this matter was not completely responsible and the positive test is his mistake, but the mistake is not very serious or negligent,” CHINADA deputy director Zhao Jian said.

“Because of this, the three-month ban is reasonable.”

Xinhua said Sun had waived his right to have his ‘B sample’ tested but had defended himself at a hearing in July, saying he had been prescribed the drug for heart palpitations he has suffered since 2008 and was unaware that it was recently banned.

Trimetazidine was added to WADA’s banned list, which is updated annually, in January this year as an “example to reflect emerging patterns of drug use.”

‘HUGE BAD NEWS’
Sun served his suspension in time to represent China at the Incheon Asian Games in South Korea in late September, where he won three gold medals.

He did not mention the suspension in Incheon and CHINADA said it did not immediately announce the sanction because it only reveals positive tests every three months.

“Sun is the most famous athlete in China and is known in the world, which means we need to handle his case very cautiously. This is huge bad news but we will not cover it up,” said Zhao.

“We announce positive cases and test statistics in our quarterly reports just as WADA requires.”

Sun burst into the international spotlight when he won the 400m and 1,500 freestyle events at the London Games in 2012, becoming the first Chinese man to win Olympic swimming gold.

The 22-year-old has also won five world titles, holds the world record for 1,500m, and is one of China’s best known and controversial sportsmen.

In early 2013 he was suspended from engaging in commercial activities after missing training and breaching team rules.

Later that year he was ordered to spend a week in a detention center after crashing a car that he had driven without a license.

China’s swimming authorities slapped a blanket suspension on him, banning him from all training and competition, before he made his return at the National Championships.

(Refiled to fix headline)
Writing by Julian Linden; Editing by Peter Rutherford​

Some points from this report:

1. It was China's own anti-doping agency tested him, and punished him without covering up.
2. The test happened in May, the banned substance was added to the list for less than 5 months, before that it was totally alright.

Contrary to Australian's swimming association:

1. Ms. Jack was tested positive on June 15th.
2. That test result was not published, NOT EVEN shared within the team.
3. Ms. Jack was allowed to go to South Korean to continue the game. What were they trying to do? Hoping that by that time, the trace in her blood would have dropped so low to avoid mandatory test on winners? That intention is a deliberate coverup on the part of the Aussie Team, not only Ms. Jack.
   
4. That coverup made Horton put up his drama and now being seen as Hypocrite and laughing stock.

There are similar cases where a substance has long been alright, but made into the list without Athletes aware. This has happened to Sharapova. I remember reading her case, it was stated per WADA rule that WADA will update the list, but WADA is NOT responsible to inform athletes, it is solely the responsible of the athlete to check WADA banned list. Because of this, I won't blame any athlete who fall victim to this kind of rule during the initial period.

This kind of practice is not alone, it is typical bureaucracy that the bureaucrat relief themselves of work and responsibility. One example is in the Western country I live in, if the traffic authority changed the rule on the road or of vehicle, it is the sole responsibility of the driver to know it. How? read the right news paper every day? check their website every day? Not their problem. My rule, your problem.

Sun Yang could be simply not knowing and being honest. Of course, I don't exclude the other possibility. But if you have ever been caught "breaking" the updated rule without knowing, you will feel the same frustration.

 

[plawolf]

Well I think Sun Yang does have to bear some responsibility for his failed drug test.

With how much elite athletes make, and how a failed drug test could be an instant career ender, every elite athlete should have at lesson one person on his/her staff who’s responsible for checking the banned substances list daily, as well as every single thing the athlete allows into his/her system for any trace of the banned substances.

The costs of having such a person is like pocket change to the likes of Sun Yang.

And even though anyone who has seen the actual facts of the case can see it as clear as day that Sun was caught out by a technicality and was not a cheat; that blemish on his recoded does allow jealous trolls like Horton and his ilk to smear him.

I think Sun would be incredibly frustrated with himself for letting such a stupid little slip up to allow haters to question all his achievements and accomplishments.

As such, I think Sun needs to share some of the blame, and other athletes need to learn from his mistake.

 

[taxiya]

I can only say that Sun have to "自认倒霉", roughly translated "accept the unlucky reality". I have paid "penalties" (officially called service fee, a polite name) for late payment of bank bill because I was on a long vacation, the expense during the vacation fall into the monthly bill which was sent to my home when I was thousands kilometre away. I could not know there is a bill soon to be due, even if I know I could not pay without the reference number. The fact is I have to pay the "penalty", but I would not accept "responsibility" that I have no way to take. Of course, the counter argument can be that it is my responsibility to have one of my friend to open my mailbox and handle everything. It all depends on the standing point.

I think, it does not matter the wording, it is easier and accepted by all parties according to existing rule. Sun broke it, knowingly or not does not matter, he serve his punishment, he learn from it, then it is over.

 

[broadsword]

That is why for his kind of offence and the type of drug, he got three months, not two years. Mack was acting like Sun got two years.

 

[taxiya]

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ABC interview of Leigh Russell (Australian Swimming Association's CEO) where the anchor questioned her "is that double standard?", to which she first tried to say "it is different", then changed subject.

I must say the anchor has gained my respect very much.

 

[taxiya]

That is why for his kind of offence and the type of drug, he got three months, not two years. Mack was acting like Sun got two years.

that is what Leigh Russell was arguing during her interview with ABC "it is different.... Mack was protesting an athlete was allowed to compete when under the process of investigation...". To this, the anchor said "FINA said it was ok for Sun Yang to compete, isn't it?, isn't that the process? So we should not respect their (FINA) process?... That's the big double standard as I see it."

 

[AssassinsMace]

Yes they're trying to spin and control the narrative. Shayna Jack is young and blonde (at times) and has her whole life ahead of her and no one should throw it away. There's even a story out there that the FINA head who is charged as being a Sun fan leaked the test result. That still doesn't lessen how Jack tested positive. She tested positive and who believes it was taken accidentally? I can believe she may have taken it unknowingly because that would be even a more blacker mark that someone in Swimming Australia is giving performance enhancing drugs to their athletes without them knowing it. I read that the Chinese media with a grin were throwing questions at swimming officlals at the world championship after the Jack revelation. This is what they should throw out there and ask if Shayna Jack claims she didn't do it vouluntarily, how many other Australian swimmers are taking PEDs and not even knowing it?

 

[Quickie]

Yes... a competitor or a body who has no business in being the judge and jury and doing it nonetheless with double standard.

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Commentary: Shanya Jack drug case exposes blatant double-standard against Sun Yang

By sportswriter Spencer Musick

BEIJING, July 29 (Xinhua) -- New allegations that Swimming Australia may have engaged in a cover-up in order to protect its athlete Shanya Jack, reported by news.com.au, have laid bare the double-standards and utter hypocrisy of the treatment afforded to Chinese Olympic champion Sun Yang by both Swimming Australia and some of his fellow athletes.

Jack failed a doping test late that month for a drug called Ligandrol that increases muscle growth, but when she was withdrawn from competition right before things got underway at the Worlds in Gwangju, Swimming Australia cited only "personal reasons" in explaining its move.

Both Swimming Australia and the country's sport minister have defended these actions, but their explanations fail to pass muster, at least for any objective observer. Even former Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority chief executive Richard Ings has taken to social media to point out that Swimming Australia's initial statement "was an untruth."

By lying to the public regarding the Jack case, Swimming Australia has lost every ounce of credibility in its defense of Mack Horton's podium stunt aimed at Sun Yang.

"Athletes in these situations have a right to a process," said Swimming Australia chief Leigh Russell, with the country's Federal Sport Minister Richard Colbeck also echoing these sentiments in calling for due process to be allowed run its course in the Jack case.

Russell and Colbeck could not be more correct in their statements. It is the sole responsibility of international sport governing bodies to adjudicate cases involving potential use of banned substances. So why, when Horton made his attention-grabbing move at the podium with Sun, did Swimming Australia rush to his defense in the name of protecting clean sport? Does Sun Yang not have the same right to due process as Shanya Jack?

Of course, he does. But Swimming Australia is not interested in due process, nor is it interested in protecting clean sport. If it was, the organization would have issued a statement after Horton's move calling on its athletes to respect their fellow competitors and respect due process in all ongoing doping cases. It also would have immediately made Jack's failed test known and promised to do its part to protect clean sport going forward. No such statements were made because this has never been Swimming Australia's intention.

FINA has already issued its ruling on the incident involving Sun's out-of-competition drug test, clearing him of all wrongdoing. WADA has appealed that decision, and is perfectly within its rights to do so. FINA has also ruled that Sun may continue to compete while that appeal is adjudicated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Due process is running its course, and third parties like Swimming Australia and Sun's fellow competitors should show respect and restraint in the meantime.

Mack Horton's own hypocrisy has also been made plain as this case unfolds. An ABC News Australia reporter on Saturday approached Horton outside the team bus in Gwangju, asking him if the Jack case had made him regret his earlier actions toward Sun. Horton smirked and stood in silence before making his way to the team bus. While he later issued a statement reiterating his commitment to clean sport, he did not address whether or not he regretted his actions toward Sun given the unfolding scandal in his own swimming association.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that the personal animus between Sun and Horton goes back to Rio 2016. Horton's selective outrage at this year's Worlds is a clear indication that he is an opportunist aiming to score personal points against (and generate negative publicity for) a powerful rival. He should stop pretending that protecting clean sport is his intention. Horton is fooling nobody.

If Horton is concerned about Sun Yang's ongoing case and feels that it should preclude him from competition, he is perfectly entitled to his opinion and free to make it known. The mixed zone would have been the appropriate place to do this in interviews and public statements. The competition podium must always be a place where respect, decency, and kindness to one's competitors prevails.

An old saying holds that 'sunlight is the best disinfectant.' Swimming Australia, with the aid of a few Australian government officials and some Australian media outlets, has actually done the public a favor by letting the sunlight in on its real intentions: protecting the image of its own swimmer while sullying that of a decorated Olympian from a competing country. Sun Yang has shown remarkable and commendable professionalism and restraint given the immense and unfair burden that has been placed on his shoulders by some of his fellow athletes.

International sports competitions are meant to be a place where political and cultural differences are set aside as the world's best athletes compete on a level playing field in a spirit of friendliness. Clean competition is a bottom-line requirement for this spirit to prevail, one that must apply equally to all countries and athletes.

The Shanya Jack incident should teach an important lesson to Swimming Australia, to Mack Horton, and to some of the western media outlets that were so quick to pile up on Sun Yang. The expectation of clean sport should never be used as a bludgeon to selectively kneecap one athlete while giving a pass to others. Fairness, objectivity, and respect for due process must always be maintained and applied equally to everyone.

 

[AssassinsMace]

Shayna Jack had previous coaches that were fired for cheating scandals with other athletes in separate incidents.

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Swimming: Mack Horton had a bob each way with Sun podium protest, Jack reaction

Australian swimmers are prone to inflated self-importance. You’re a world-class individual medley athlete? How many people in the world are actually doing individual medleys?

Most of them are big fish in the little pond of global sport, and the absence of television coverage of the world championships for the first time since 1986 may have reminded them that no network in this country has been prepared to broadcast them — because too few people have been interested in watching them until Mack Horton’s initially awkward, and ultimately cringeworthy, stance of not standing at all with Sun Yang.

Horton’s no villain in any of this, but nor is he a saint.

His so-called protest against Sun was having a bob each way.

He tried to win, he lost, and so he stood in the corner and claimed the whole thing was unfair to begin with.

The image of the 400m silver medallist standing to the side at the presentation, with gold-medallist Sun and Italy’s bronze medallist Gabrielle Detti huddled on the podium, is not an especially powerful one. Detti has refused to join him. Horton, on his own, does not appear triumphant, standing up for the common good. His face is downbeat. His body language is slumped, as if he’s having a sulk.

Australian swimming’s ‘sandpapergate’

It’s been likened to the Black Power salute against racism in America from the 1968 Olympics but please, nothing could be more inaccurate.

Even before Shayna Jack’s positive drug test turned the whole thing into the biggest dog’s breakfast since sandpapergate brought Cricket Australia’s players and officials to their knees, Horton’s move looked to these eyes like sour grapes.

Because the golden rule in sport is that once you enter a field of play — a swimming pool, a football pitch, a golf course, a boxing ring, a tennis court, a cricket ground — there’s no excuses. You know the state of things before you begin. Whatever the result, you have to cop it sweet.

Injury? Too bad. Sun Yang? Horton knew what he was getting into.

An empty lane would have been a protest

He must have thought Sun was beatable, because he dived in and tried to beat him, losing by 33/100ths of a second. If he thought the result was rigged because Sun was, is and always will be a drug cheat — a black and white issue, apparently, much to Jack’s horror — he should have walked onto the pool deck before the race, placed his goggles on the blocks and walked away, refusing to take part. An empty lane — there’s a protest.

If Horton won the gold and Sun the silver, would he still have refused to be on the podium with him? Would he have relinquished top spot on the dais? Or was that only in defeat? Why did he take part in the supposedly tainted presentation ceremony at all? Why accept the supposedly tainted medal?

Horton also swam the 4x200m relay, against Sun. Australia won it. China missed a medal. Horton took his spot on the podium. Why not protest again? He’d still been forced to compete against Sun. He only protests if Sun gets a medal? Or if he wins?

Horton has gone awfully quiet, awfully quickly. Mid-meet, before Jack’s doping tests were revealed, and the outright lie about “personal reasons” forcing her home, Horton said he no longer wanted to talk about doping in the interests of protecting the Australian team.

From what? It was a bit late for that. He knew his stance would make the meet about him. What an extraordinary coincidence if he knew nothing about the real cause of Jack’s absence when he suddenly decided to zip it.

Horton and Jack — another bob each way

What next for him? A refusal to be part of any Australian team that has Jack in it? What of Jack’s coach? Darren Lehmann lost his job as Australia’s cricket mentor after the cheating scandal in South Africa.

What of Dean Boxall, the coach of Jack? Why should he be allowed to be involved in Australian swimming? He also coaches Ariarne Titmus, who stunned American Katie Ledecky to win the 400m. If Boxall was a Chinese coach, and his 400m swimmer caused one of the biggest upsets of the modern era, as Titmus did, and then it was revealed another of his swimmers had tested positive, we’d be baying for his Chinese blood and questioning Titmus’s credibility.

If Sun did what Jack has done, writing about falling into an emotional heap with her grandma, we’d be laughing him out of town. Swimming Australia has supported Horton’s uncompromising stance. But now Jack’s violation has been exposed, it says doping is a complicated issue that needs mature discussion. Another bob each way.

Jacco Verhaeren is the Australian team’s coach. What of him, too? If he’s presided over a drug cheating incident, regardless of his knowledge of it, why should he survive? Lehmann did not tell Cam Bancroft and Dave Warner to grab the sandpaper, and yet he fell on his sword.

What of SA chief executive Leigh Russell? It’s not possible to have presided over a greater stuff-up. As m’learned colleague Wayne Smith has written from Korea, this is an absolute disaster. I say it’s of Cricket Australia, Cape Town-proportions. While officials and Verhaeren have ducked for cover when the fallout was hitting the fan in Korea, it was left to Cate Campbell, who had to be interviewed as a medallist, to talk on behalf of the team. Not since sandpapergate has been there been a bigger calamity.

But let’s look on the bright side, eh? People are interested in swimming again. Television broadcasters will be falling over themselves for the rights to the next train wreck.

Jack's present coach is apparently saying that Jack supports Horton's protest against Sun 100%. Hand me some popcorn...