The saddest effect of doping in modern sports is the way it has robbed us of the unalloyed exhilaration at witnessing true greatness. After Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen broke the world record in the 400-meter individual medley Saturday, a BBC commentator immediately noted her sudden improvement in form and raised the specter of doping. On Monday, World Swimming Coaches Association Executive Director John Leonard called her performance "unbelievable," "suspicious" and "disturbing."
Some Chinese have been quick to play the racism card in Ms. Ye's defense. The Global Times newspaper complained, "The West still judges China with an old mentality, and is petty about the progress China makes." Her father also voiced resentment of the West, "which typically questions Chinese athletes and tends to be a little arrogant."
More reasoned observers recognize that any athlete today who achieves such an outstanding feat as Ms. Ye will inevitably face questions. Her time for the final 50 meters of the event was faster than that of male gold medalist Ryan Lochte, which is rare but not unprecedented. Gary Wadler, the past chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited list committee, told the New York Daily News that voicing suspicions is fair game: "When you have extraordinary performances like she has you have to raise the question, 'Is it legitimate?'"
China's Ye Shiwen poses with her gold medal for the women's 200-meter individual medley swimming final.
The history of doping in Chinese women's swimming makes such questions even more natural. During the 1990s, the People's Republic went down the East German road, using steroids to turn its female athletes into androgynous freaks. Xue Yinxian, former chief doctor for the Chinese gymnastic team, recently admitted that administering performance-enhancing drugs to athletes was national policy, as has former head Olympics doctor Chen Zhanghao.
But after several embarrassing episodes of mass disqualifications, that policy underwent a 180-degree turn, and China has largely stamped out drug cheating. Li Zhesi, another 16-year-old female swimmer, is not at the Olympics because the country's own anti-doping testing agency caught her using the banned blood-booster EPO. If Ms. Ye is cheating, it is likely an isolated case, not the doing of the Chinese sports machine.
The success of that machine has arguably made doping superfluous and self-defeating. The Communist Party has learned that it can win plenty of gold medals through a training apparatus that selects promising athletes at a very young age on the basis of physical aptitude and subjects them to an intensive regimen. Ms. Ye essentially became a professional athlete at the age of six, and trained at government expense in Australia with two of the world's top coaches, Ken Wood and Denis Cotterell.
Ms. Ye and others are the product of China's drive for national greatness, and this is also a source of the resentment some Westerners feel at their gold medals and world records. As with doping, much of the joy at an individual's success is lost when it is the result of a massive government program the scope of which goes far beyond anything the Soviet Union devised.
The Global Times complained that a foreign reporter supposedly asked Ms. Ye to comment on the belief that "Chinese athletes are robots trained to win medals." That is a terrible thing to ask a young girl. But it reflects another sad reality in modern sports.
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