Contentious Issues Will Follow Sun Yang and Mack Horton Into Olympic Pool

What came out of the swimming competition this year is that the swimmers are ready to start policing themselves. Which ultimately is what they have to do.

Neither Horton or King set out to become notaries for clean sport. They appear to be people of strong opinion (good) who aren't shy about making those opinions known (good again).

The national federations and the politicians obviously prefer that the athletes just shut up and compete. The athletes, OTOH, are becoming cognizant of the fact that the ONLY MOMENT THEY HAVE with the cameras on them is after they compete; after that, in almost all Olympic sports, anything they have to say gets relegated to the back pages.

The fact that there even exist "suspensions" of a time duration (three months here, six months there) is political, and reflects the desire of the federation to avoid the courtroom (which would take money away from needed kickbacks and bribery, in many of these sport federations.).

Ask the clean athlete, and it's one strike and you're gone forever. The sport will survive without anyone affected by the occasional mistake. The risk of unfairness to the clean athletes is just too high to be tolerated by doing otherwise.

You cheat, you cheat. It's on you, not the person who points it out.

Seems the solution to doping is to ban athletes for life. Get busted and your career is over.

Most of these people are simply far too driven to compete and win at any cost. Lifetime suspensions might make it too risky of a path to take.

"Sun said he took it for a heart condition, but he did not have a medical exemption to do so"
This is not true. That medicine was prescribed to him after he had a heart infection of virus in 2008, which was cured but left a heart problem that ocationaly borthered him. You can find this and more related recorded informaion online in Chinese.
So it is strange to me, that the author doesn't know this fact even after having read so many Weibo in Chinese.

There is a separate Paralympics. Maybe there should be a separate All-Drug Olympics. Might sponsors be attracted from Big Pharma? Then there could be two sets of world records, and we could leave it to the ages to determine whether and how those records should be compared.

I am almost old enough to recall the 4-minute mile. (I was never young enough to run a 7-minute mile, though I could qualify for the final in power-napping.) Now the wheelchair mile is approaching 3 minutes. At first you wouldn't have let the "handicapped" compete with "regular" runners, but now you CAN'T because it would be "unfair." I'm lovin' it.

I guess the trolls think that they are the embodiment of Chinese soft power. China is not unique in having such people. There have been many stories over the years about the antics of English football hooligans misbehaving at home or at football pitches located in continental European cities, and the rampages of ice hockey fans who "act out" after "their" teams lose championship games in Canada.

The difference here is one of scale (most populous country in the world) and the implicit approval such clowns get from the Communist Party of China, which often indulges in vitriolic nationalism for political reasons.

A most unfortunate counterpoint to the uplifting stories about Chinese athletes such as Fu Yuanhui, whose good-natured performance at Rio has been a joy to watch.

The deeper reality is the institutionalized cheating supported by the Chinese government over the years. Russia AND China are poster children for the "wrong way to do things." Nation-States with the sophisticated scientific capability to doctor test results and to flat-out cheat the system will find a way to do so. Nations with a cultural bent towards lying and cheating their way to success will do so. Here's the sad fact: They are morally incapable of recognizing the ethical dilemmas drive the raging debate over cheating. It simply does not compute in their imagination.

The article is full of biases. It failed to mention that Horton admitted later that he did not have proof that Sun did doping and calling him a cheat was a "tactic" to distract him during race. It paints a picture of two opposing sides, with US and Australia being "clean" and free from doping while Russia and China does doping on a wide scale. Lack of definitive evidence as Chinese athletes in recent years was not proof of innocence, but proof that further investigations are necessary. The only credible accusation made against Chinese athletes is from over 20 years ago, in a completely different field. If one such incidence is proof that all Chinese athletes are suspect, a few US athletes were caught cheating a while back as well. Should those people be the foundation for questioning the integrity of US athletes at these games without evidence?

What is the point of cheating? I don't get it.

There are injustices in the world. No doubt about that. And there are also injustice fighters. They feel that they must right what is wrong. Australian swimmer Mack Horton has a right to feel that he needs to fight for a level playing field in swim meets. Likewise goes the American swimmer Lily King.

We have to assume that with intense scrutiny into doping, the 2016 Olympic games will make sure everyone in the pool will be tested. The competitors are innocent until proven guilty. Accusation without proof is wildly impudent.

But there is another potential problem: it is a slippery slope from fighting for justice to becoming an "injustice collector". That's what self-radicalized home-grown terrorists derive their motivation and justification. Heightened Self-Righteousness give them the excuse to think, say and do whatever they feel right, without thinking about the consequence. And that could plunge the whole world into turmoil.

As the case of Mack Horton demonstrates: called someone a "drug cheat" so publicly without proof can bring unexpected nasty responses when it is considered an racist insult to a whole population.

It's going to be so fun to watch...go Horton.

Chinese reaction to world events reminds me of Trump: overblown, often unreasonable, and mired in an overweening sense of self-importance.

Jealous Racist White always complain when losing. Yang is the best and he is not using Alcohol .