Despite a slow start affected by unfair anti-doping scrutiny, Chinese swimmers have capped their Olympic campaign with pride, bringing home the biggest medal haul ever, one new world record and plenty of respect from the Paris pool.
After nine days of intense competition, the Chinese swimming team wrapped up its Olympic program with a strong finish by pulling off an inspiring victory in the men's 4x100m medley relay, ahead of the United States and France, to add a second gold to its total of 12 medals. The team surpasses its previous best of 10, achieved at London 2012.
Propelled by 100m freestyle gold medalist and world record holder Pan Zhanle, the Chinese quartet, also including backstroke veteran Xu Jiayu, breaststroke world champion Qin Haiyang and butterfly specialist Sun Jiajun, came from behind, riding on Pan's scintillating pace in the final split to touch first in 3 minutes, 27.46 seconds in the heated final. The exciting finish at the Paris La Defense Arena brought the applauding capacity crowd to its feet.
The victory ended the U.S. team's decadeslong stranglehold on the medley relay in the Olympics, where they have won every time — except at the 1980 Moscow Games, which they boycotted — since the event was introduced in 1960.
During the medal ceremony, members of the once invincible U.S. team, such as Caeleb Dressel and Ryan Murphy, greeted the Chinese team and shook hands with Pan and his teammates, before sitting down with the French squad for a group photo with the Chinese winners standing in the middle of the podium.
The mutual respect and appreciation helped ease the tension between Chinese swimmers and some of their foreign opponents that stemmed from false doping accusations by overseas media, such as The New York Times and German broadcaster ARD, that targeted Chinese athletes involved in what was proved to be a food contamination incident in 2021.
The sensationalized reports, although denied by the World Anti-Doping Agency and World Aquatics, the international governing body for six aquatic disciplines, led to more frequent than normal doping tests for Chinese swimmers before and during the Games. This took a heavy toll, emotionally and psychologically, on pre-Games favorites including Zhang Yufei in the women's butterfly and Qin in the men's breaststroke events.
However, Team China rose to the challenge and delivered when it mattered most.
Regarding the rigorous testing program that Team China endured in Paris, backstroke star Xu said: "We have no problem with that. We follow the rules. I don't want to make any excuses. We did overcome some challenges. We never shy away from challenges. This is something that is rooted in our Chinese spirit."
After winning the men's 100m freestyle in a world record time of 46.40 seconds on Wednesday, Pan backed it up with an epic 100m split in 45.92, the world's first sub-46 100m split, in his relay leg to push China ahead in the final sprint. That mark broke the previous fastest 46.06 effort by Jason Lezak of the U.S. that led his team to gold in the same medley relay at Beijing 2008.
According to international rules, only the time of a leadoff leg in a relay event counts for official world records.
"I'm very proud of this achievement we had," said Xu, a three-time Olympian who won his second Olympic silver medal in the men's 100m backstroke in Paris.
Xu's longtime rival Murphy, a two-time individual backstroke Olympic champion, paid respect to his Chinese opponents, stressing that it is healthy for the sport to have more balanced competition.
"Today, China was just a little bit better," Murphy said. "It is hard to get separation in that race. It was really tight all the way through. Hats off to China, they had a great race tonight."
Dressel, a nine-time Olympic gold medalist on the U.S. relay team, said the Chinese quartet deserved the win.
"Australia and the U.S., I feel, are the two most recognizable, but from these Games I saw it from China and France. I don't think we're getting any worse; it's good for the sport to have the whole world involved," he said.
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