At the Chinese National Games in Jinan, Qi Hui, 24 and racing for the Chinese Army team, crushed the 1997 Asian 200m medley mark of doping-banned Wu Yanyan with a 2:08.32 victory. There are no Jakeds supposedly allowed at the meet, nor the X-Glide family of suits, so we assume Qi was wearing a LZR (happy to be corrected, of course). When she wore a LZR in home Olympic year 2008, she clocked 2:12.61, and that compared to an all-time best of 2:11.92 from December 2006. Her 2:11.10 qualification time in Jinan was a best time.
Liu Jing and Zheng Rongrong took silver and bronze in 2:10.67 and 2:12.51 respectively. Qi, like a fair few in China, has a record of swimming at her best at the all-important National Games, a competition she first attended as a 12-year-old swimming around 2:20 back in 1997 when Wu was on her way to being banned, but not before she had deprived rivals of the world record and 1998 world title at Perth, Australia, as several of her teammates failed doping tests and the contents of Yuan Yuan's luggage revealed that she was carruying enough HGH to feed the entire world titles team, a squad headed by Zhou Ming. He was banned for life, reports, including FINA official statements from the time, tell us.
One of China's subsequent head coaches claimed the ban was for eight years. That's convenient, given that Zhou Ming, who had a double-digit count of personal charges test positive for doping in the 1990s, is there in Jinan on the deck as bold as brass coaching young children and sharing a laugh or two with colleagues now on the national team. His systematic abuse of athletes should, of course, have guaranteed his permanent removal from the presence of children and the Olympic sport of swimming. Darkness casts a long shadow.
Described in Xinhua reports as "China's world champion and winner of the world championships" Yang Yu (she was key to the 4x200m victory, while Italy's Federica Pellegrini, we recall, was the dominant force in the 200m free) clocked 1:56.74 to claim the 200m free crown in Jinan for Zhejiang ahead of Song Wenyan, on 1:57.36 and Pang Jiayin, member of that winning Rome relay, on 1:57.40. Song was on song: her previous best was 2:00.84, but then she was just 14 at the time. In Rome, Yang and Pang, plus Zhu Qianwei and Liu Jing, set a shiny suits world record of 7:42.08 to win the 4x200m free.
Zhejiang had another winner: Wu Peng, 2007 world silver medallist, confirmed his dominance in the 200m 'fly in 1:54.40. Chen Weiwu took silver in 1:55.51. Chen is 19. His previous best: 2:00.47. Another Chen, Chen Yin, took bronze in 1:56.36, just shy of his best time, set at Rome 2009. More from Jinan as events unfold and the depth of the field emerges.
