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CNN
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The Chinese internet erupted with jubilation and pride on Monday after Chinese swimmers ended a decades-long U.S. dominance in the men’s 4×100-meter medley at the Olympics, a stunning victory for a team that had faced intense scrutiny following doping allegations.
Pan Jianle, who set a world record in the 100m freestyle last week, catapulted China from third to first in the final leg of the relay on Sunday, overtaking rivals from the United States and France in a stunning comeback.
Pan finished in 45.92 seconds, faster than the 46.40 seconds she recorded in the 100m final four days earlier.
The U.S. team finished 0.55 seconds behind China, missing out on the gold medal in the event for the first time since the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, ending an unbeaten streak dating back to the men’s medley’s debut in the 1960 Olympics.
It is China’s second gold medal at the Paris Olympics, following Pan’s record-breaking victory last Wednesday, but outside China their success has drawn scrutiny from some, including from their peers in elite swimming.
China’s swimming team is under huge pressure after it was revealed that almost half of the athletes Beijing sent to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics tested positive for banned performance-enhancing substances just months ago.
Just before the Tokyo Olympics, the China Anti-Doping Agency exonerated the swimmers, ruling that their positive tests for a banned heart drug were the result of contamination in a hotel restaurant. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the global sports doping watchdog, accepted the decision without appeal.
The allegations, first reported in April by The New York Times and German public broadcaster ARD, sparked an outcry in swimming, where athletes found guilty of doping can face multi-year bans.
Concerns were further heightened last week when WADA acknowledged that two Chinese swimmers had tested positive for traces of banned anabolic steroids in a separate case in 2022. They were provisionally suspended but later cleared of any violation by Chinese authorities, WADA said, also because of food-related contamination.
In China, many social media users saw the Chinese swimming team’s historic relay win as proof of a landslide victory.
The win became the center of discussion on Chinese social media on Monday, making up several top trending topics on microblogging site Weibo, including the hashtag “Pan Zhanle’s stunning comeback” which was viewed more than 500 million times, as was another hashtag about the relay gold medal.
Pan, who turned 20 on Sunday, said the team gold medal was a birthday present.
“I fulfilled a promise I made a year ago to celebrate my 20th birthday with a team gold medal,” the swimmer wrote in a viral post on Weibo, where he has gained 1.6 million followers and become an overnight celebrity.
“A new journey has begun and goals have quietly been set. I hope to contribute more to the team. The Chinese swimming team is always the best!”
Pan has also won fans over with her confidence and candor.
Interviewed poolside by state broadcaster CCTV after the competition, several of Pan’s teammates said they were not satisfied with their performance in the first half of the relay. Pan encouraged and praised his teammates: “The race is over, the victory is ours. It is not us who should be unhappy, it is the others who should be unhappy.”
“We won fair and square.”
In China, where the swimming team has long been a source of Olympic glory, the doping allegations have sparked outrage and accusations of unfair treatment, particularly over the intense scrutiny the team faced this summer.
Nearly a dozen Chinese swimmers who tested positive three years ago are competing in the Paris Olympics, including two of the four who won relay gold medals on Sunday.
Pan, a two-time gold medallist, has not tested positive in 2021 but there are also doubts about her impressive performance in Paris.
After Pan broke the world record in the 100m freestyle last week, former Australian Olympic swimmer and coach Brett Hawke posted on Instagram that “it was humanly impossible to beat those swimmers,” and said. “That swim was unreal. Swimming in that pool, with those swimmers.”
In China, state media and internet users have rallied to Pan’s defence, with many Chinese social media users on Monday praising him for defying pressure and proving his accusers wrong.
“If the first record-breaking didn’t convince foreigners, this amazing reversal certainly will. (The bread) is truly impressive and overwhelming!” said one comment with 2,300 upvotes.
“Our strength speaks for itself. We won the gold medal fair and square,” said another.
But overseas, doubts remain.
After Sunday’s relay, Britain’s Olympic gold medallist Adam Peaty called for stricter doping testing after the British team finished fourth in the race.
“I think you need to trust the system, but I also don’t think you do,” he said, according to Reuters. “I think the system needs to be tougher.”
“One of my favorite quotes I saw recently was, there’s no point in winning if you don’t win fair,” Peaty said, “and I think you know that truth in your heart. Even if you touch it and you know it’s cheating, you still can’t win.”
“So in my opinion, if you’ve been on it and you’ve been contaminated twice, as a person of honour, I think you should be removed from the sport.”
