Chinese Swimmers, Possibly Cheating? No!

↵Michael Phelps wasn’t the only hellcat dolphin in the pool today in Beijing: a Chinese women’s relay team, whose members average a rank of #39 in the world, was the top qualifier in the 4x100m freestyle, setting records and whatnot.
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↵China has not been very good in swimming competitions lately, and the team shaved an apparently absurd amount of time of its best recent performance. Chinese swimmers were busted for steroids 30 times in the 1990s. 1+1=2? Hmm ...
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↵Karen Crouse of the New York Times sums up all the out-of-nowhere Chinese swim performances Saturday and discusses the concerns of opponents observers.↵↵⇥In the months before the Games, the big conspiracy theory in swimming was that China had a shadow team that it was keeping largely sequestered, the better to escape the radar of the drug testers. ... By lunchtime on Sunday, the Chinese may have matched their medal total from the 2007 World Championships. If that happens it will be left to the rest of the world to wonder if they are transcendent performances or transgressions.↵↵We’ll know something’s truly fishy if Wang Zhizhi drops 40 on USA Basketball Sunday morning.↵