Ye Shiwen's world record

'Who needs drugs? It's all down to hard work and our training methods'   By Mac 

 Ye, age 16, swam the distance in 4 minutes 28.43 seconds, covering the last 50 metres 0.17 seconds faster than US gold medalist Ryan Lochte did in the men's event, knocking 5 seconds off her best time in the process. "I wouldn't typically expect a female swimmer to out-swim a male swimmer at Olympic level, unless something had gone wrong for the male," says sports physiologist Mitch Lomax of the University of Portsmouth, UK. "But I wouldn't say that it's physiologically impossible." John Leonard of the World Swimming Coaches Association called Ye's performance "unbelievable", but Ye and the Chinese team have denied allegations of doping. All Olympic medalists are drug-tested. An extraordinary performance by an individual athlete could trigger extra tests, but the Olympic anti-doping lab, based in Harlow, outside London, would not confirm or deny whether these tests had been carried out for Ye. The British Olympic Association said
Ye was "clean".   more