Will Sun Yang go to Tokyo? Improbable again last year, the question arises again less than two months before the event: the triple Olympic champion (over 400 m and 1,500 m in 2012, over 200 m in 2016) has a final chance to justify the destruction with hammer blows of a vial of his blood, during an unexpected doping control at his home in September 2018. In February 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) had not yet been convinced by the swimmer’s defense, which attested that the controllers had not produced “Documents proving their identity”, and had imposed an eight-year suspension for this gesture. Either the maximum penalty, thus marking the end of a career as tumultuous in the basins as outside.
But to everyone’s amazement, the Swiss federal court overturned the decision in December, sanctioning the “Bias” the president of the panel of arbitrators and former head of Italian diplomacy, Franco Frattini. Denouncing the cruelty inflicted on animals in China, while the Sun Yang case was under investigation, the magistrate had indeed delivered a series of tweets “Extremely violent” and racist, the court revealed.
Eleven world titles
Here is the swimmer with eleven world titles, 29, ready to play his qualifiers in court, before the supreme sports court based in Lausanne, for a videoconference hearing and closed to the media between Tuesday and Thursday. No date has yet been communicated for the final decision. However, it should quickly fall, with a strong stake in the key: the Chinese Swimming Federation clarified that the athletes titled at the 2019 Worlds in Gwangju (South Korea) would be “Automatically qualified” for the Tokyo Games (July 23-August 8).
Sun Yang, who won two world crowns there in the 200m and 400m freestyle, meets these criteria perfectly. The Hangzhou native had at the time been able to participate in the Korean Worlds despite his control in 2018 after the International Swimming Federation (FINA) cleared him on a formal defect. The World Anti-Doping Agency had appealed to CAS – the latter subsequently disavowing FINA in its 2020 decision – but the delay in the proceedings allowed the swimmer to line up.
Several opponents then expressed their dissatisfaction with his presence in the pools. “I don’t want to see this guy compete at the Worlds or the Olympics against my partners who work very hard to be there”, launched on Twitter the Briton Adam Peaty, Olympic champion in the 100 m breaststroke. Medalists alongside him in the 400m and 200m respectively, Australian Mack Horton refused to stand on the podium, while Briton Duncan Scott refused to shake his hand.
“Sun Yang, he’s pissing purple”
The open mistrust of the other stars of the Olympic basin towards the Chinese swimmer is not new. In 2014 and in the greatest secrecy, Sun Yang was suspended for three months for testing positive for a stimulant (trimetazidine), a sanction made public long after she was served. During the Rio 2016 Games, the world record holder in the 1,500m freestyle had already had to face the hostility of his rivals which had been simmering for a long time, before bursting during the Brazilian competition. Mack Horton – already – had first called him “dope”, before stealing gold from him in the 400m freestyle.
Usually unwavering, the Chinese swimmer burst into tears, before retaliating by winning the 200m. “Sun Yang, he’s pissing purple”, had in the meantime assen the French backrest designer Camille Lacourt, “Disgusted to see people who cheated on the catwalks”.
Suffice to say that the competition will take a close look at the judgment of the CAS. And even if the decision of the authority would be favorable to the Chinese swimmer, the uncertainty remains on his current level and his physical preparation. In China, where he is adored by a good part of the population, no information has yet filtered on this subject.
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