British journalist Craig Lorde, who became popular in Europe and the United States for maliciously smearing Chinese swimming superstar Sun Yang, couldn't help but criticize Chinese swimming again, and when Tang Qianting won the gold medal in the women's 100m breaststroke at the 2024 World Championships in Doha, he used a strange tone to satirize why Chinese girls have improved so quickly in such a short period of time.
Lord was a very professional swimmer who had been writing solidly but was not famous, but later learned to attract attention and won a large number of Western readers by attacking Sun Yang. Some Chinese swimmers naively thought that Lord was just unaccustomed to Sun Yang's rampant and unruly behavior, believing that he had no prejudice against the Chinese swimming team.
Last year's World Championships Qin Haiyang won three gold medals in the men's 50m, 100m, and 200m breaststroke, and Lode listed a lot of data, which is nothing more than to show why Qin Haiyang, who was once a second-rate player, suddenly became the king of breaststroke. Coincidentally, Wang Shun won the gold medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games last year, and Lord insinuated again, which is nothing more than saying that Wang Shun has been in the doldrums since the Tokyo Olympics, why did he suddenly stand up again.
In the women's 100m breaststroke at the World Championships, Tang Qianting helped the Chinese team repeat the glory of Luo Xuejuan's 2003 championship in this event, but Lord wrote sourly: "In the 100m breaststroke preliminaries of the Fukuoka 2023 World Championships in July last year, Tang Qianting finished 20th with a time of 1:07.15. What an impact a few months had on her next global stage on her way to the Olympics – 1:05.27 – she suddenly became the most serious contender for the podium in Paris. ”
In fact, there is nothing new in Lord's denigration of the Chinese swimming team, it is basically subjective speculation, as long as the Chinese athletes greatly improve their results in a short period of time, they will enter his doubt, while the rocketing performance of European and American athletes is taken for granted. In recent years, only Zhang Yufei and Xu Jiayu of Chinese stars may not have been slandered by Lord, because their results in competitions have been very stable.