“I am very sad to see my sport going this way”, Lacourt said.
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“Look, what I can say is that it was a real pity I couldn’t defend my 400m title”, he added.
The chief executive of Swimming Australia, Mark Anderson, said that they fully support Horton’s comments.
Sun is a popular hero in China, despite his repeated brushes with controversy – which include serving a drugs suspension in secret in 2014.
Great Britain’s James Guy finishes in fourth place as Sun Yang claims gold in the men’s 200m freestyle at the Olympic Games.
“So what I needed to do is just to be myself and to be a champion”.
Earlier at the swimming meet, meanwhile, Australian Mack Horton took aim at Yang after beating him in the final of the 400m freestyle final.
The Chinese swimming authorities wrote to its Australian counterpart demanding an apology from Horton for “his inappropriate comments” while the Australian side backed Horton saying: “Mack is entitled to express a point of view”.
“Nobody should focus on if he (Horton) has problems with a Chinese swimmer or not”. “It is proof of a lack of good manners and upbringing”.
Australia has refused to apologize after an Olympic swimmer sparked outrage by accusing China’s Sun Yang of being a “drug cheat”. One senses that this is a story with a narrative arc that Horton could not possibly have predicted when he uttered the words “drug cheat” at the poolside. Some fans have even taken to trolling Horton, calling him “snake” and “ugly” among other obscenities.
China’s Sun Yang thundered to Olympic gold when he beat Le Clos to banish his inner demons after a stinging loss at the weekend. Slanderers failed to distract you by spreading rumors.
It’s not the only time Sun has been a less-than-ideal role model.
Phelps was referring directly to Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, who won a silver medal in the women’s 100m breaststroke on Monday night.
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He is also no stranger to controversy. The Chinese team briefly banned him from competing after a raft of disciplinary issues, including crashing a friend’s Porsche SUV into a bus in 2013 while driving without a license, landing him in jail. His excuse wasn’t exactly watertight: “Because I have been focusing on training and competition, I had only a hazy knowledge of the law, which led to my mistake”, he said.
