Sun’s Mum Flares: Ming Yang Reveals How Chinese Swim Bosses Sought To Hide 2014 Doping Positive

The eight-year ban handed down to three-time Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for tampering with a test sample in 2018 has prompted the swimmer’s mother to launch an unprecedented attack on Chinese swimming authorities.

In a social network post subsequently deleted but not before the Chinese media picked it up and ran with it, Ming Yang claims that the Chinese Swimming Association (CSA) attempted to cover up her son’s positive doping test in 2014 and time events so that Sun Yang’s competition results would not be affected by events that broke the WADA Code.

She also accuses the authority of threatening to drop support for Sun in his legal case against WADA this past year if he did not accept the lawyers and translators they allocated to him even though both swimmer and his mother were unhappy with the choices.

In this article showing a social chat thread from Ming Yang, Sun’s mother  is said to have “raged” about the legal team serving her son, a legal team that will now be replaced, the Chinese media suggest. In part of Ming’s post, she states:

“I couldn’t sleep at night, powerless and helpless. My son struggled in the swimming pool for more than 20 years, and was strangled by power and lies.”

She claims that one lawyer had repeatedly omitted Sun Yang’s testimony and the other party’s weaknesses in key places.

Zhang Qihuai, Sun’s long-term legal adviser, told the Beijing News that Ming Yang was dissatisfied with both “a Chinese layers and another international lawyer based in Switzerland”.

Ming also comes in for criticism along with others in Sun’s encourage in a Chinese article that suggests they helped create the “Giant Baby” that is the star of their show.

The article concludes:

“In the formation of giant-baby psychology, leading to self-centredness and shirking responsibilities, it is hard not to blame parents for providing excessive protection. In Liu Zongyuan’s “Biography of Planting Trees”, he borrows the words of tree grower Guo Yantuo, to tell people to keep the growing tree a draw – and to abandon it.

“The same is true of parenting: if parents insist on creating a harmless greenhouse for their children, those injuries will only be doubled after their children leave the greenhouse.”

As Sun’s Chinese lawyer announced that their client will appeal to the last-stand Swiss Federal Tribunal to overturn a WADA eight-year ban that effectively ends the 28-year-old’s career, Ming noted that the CSA had imposed a fine of RMB5,000 (about pounds 550) and issued Sun with a warning for his May 2014 positive test for trimetazidine, a heart booster that joined the banned substances list at the start of that year.

All of that was kept a secret to allow Sun to race to three titles at the Asian Games in Incheon, Korea, in September 2014, wrote Ming, confirming what has long suspected by many following the story.

Sun was then approached in October 2014 by CSA officials who rattled the WADA Code and would appear to break rules governing reporting deadlines, when they told him, according to Ming, in a translation of her words:

“If we report this offence in the way we left it, it will not be approved. Now the Asian Games are over, your result will not be affected and the final outcome in this case will not be announced to the public either. We can say that the penalty was for three months sometime between May and October.”

Ming Yang talks to the media in a break at the CAS hearing of WADA Vs Sun Yang and FINA in November 2019 – Photo Courtesy: Craig Lord

Sun is said to have rejected the strategy but the plan was agreed to by his mother, who is cited in the FINA Doping Panel report of January 2019 as having asked a security guard to fetch the hammer with which he would then smash the outer casing of the blood sample at the heart of the tampering charge Sun was found guilty of by CAS last Friday.

The news of Sun’s positive test was broken in a one-paragraph brief in a Xinhua report in December 2014. Sun was handed a three-month retrospective suspension that was never actually served. FINA did not challenge the leniency of the penalty.

The world’s powerhouse of distance, endurance swimming, had been taking the substance “for several years” he said at the time, to control “heart palpitations”.

Sun’s doctor, Ba Zhen, was also penalised: he received a one-year ban for prescribing the banned substance and then, after SwimVortex unearthed pictures of him working on the pool deck at the Asian Games, was handed a concurrent, second one-year penalty under rules forbidding those serving suspensions from working with others operating under the WADA Code. His argument was that the Chinese version of the latest WADA Code had not been translated from English by Chinada, the national anti-doping agency, and therefore he had overlooked the addition to the banned list of a substance he had long prescribed for Sun.

FINA stated that Dr Ba was ‘not a member of the Chinese team’ in Incheon. That overlooked the fact that he was pictured on the deck wearing an accreditation for the Asian Games and working with the star turn of the Chinese team. Anyone who has ever had to accredit for a major international sports event will know how unlikely it is for Dr Ba to have been present in his medical capacity or any other without the approval of organisers based on the approval of others, namely the Chinese authorities.

Ming Yang takes the stand and appears on the big screen at her son Sun Yang’s CAS hearing in November 2019 – Photo Courtesy: Craig Lord

Ming’s breaking of ranks with the CSA is significant and is likely to be shut down. China is big business for FINA, an international federation that, at the behest of the China Swimming Association, FINA created an award just for Sun: the “Outstanding Contribution to Swimming Popularity in China” award.

Many of the International federation’s biggest commercial partners are Chinese, which goes some way to explaining why FINA banished its regulatory neutrality to support the legal case of Sun against WADA and why, under a giant World-Championship banner declaring “Dive into Peace”, war broke out on the podium in Gwangju, Korea, last year, swimmers opining that they felt ignored and overlooked by the international federation and felt that Sun was receiving favourable treatment.

Among remaining questions in the Sun saga, is what WADA lead counsel Richard Young described as “concerns over intimidation” of anti-doping officers as the CAS hearing contemplated the roles of Dr. Ba, his boss Dr. Han Zhaoqi, the deputy director of the Zhejiang Anti-Doping Agency who also serves as a member of Sun’s science team, and Hao Cheng, the head of the Chinese Swimming Association.

All three urged Sun to remove his blood sample from the chain of custody in 2018. All three remain in place at the heart and helm of Chinese swimming.

• A version of this article appears in The Sunday Times today

Swimming World’s coverage of Sun Yang & FINA Vs WADA At the Court of Arbitration for Sport

• Sun Yang Vs WADA Verdict: Damning Eight-Year Ban Ends Career Of Chinese Controversy
• Commentary: Sun Yang’s Hammer Is Not Yet Done As The Light Turns Towards The Men In Suits
• Sun Yang Lawyer Accuses WADA & CAS Of ‘Evil Lies’; Will Fight To Race At Tokyo 2020 & Sue Testing Agent
• Commentary: Sun Yang’s Eight-Year Ban – History repeats: Whiskey In The Jar To Hammer Horror
• Sun Yang Says He Will ‘Definitely’ Appeal 8-Year-Ban At Swiss Federal Court
• Adam Peaty Welcomes Eight-Year Ban After Sun Yang ‘Disrespects The Sport’
• Sun Yang Verdict: The FINA Doping Panel Ruling That Triggered WADA Action
• Rudd, World Swimming Coaches Association Vice-President: CAS Decision Has Rescued Swimming
• Sun Yang Verdict: Ryan Cochrane And Chad Le Clos On The Lasting Pain Of Loss
• The Podium Protestors
• Thumbs up from Mack and his stance for clean sport….a date with destiny awaits
• Duncan Scott ‘Fully Respects And Supports’ CAS Decision & Their Commitment To Clean Sport