“I’m disgusted to see athletes who cheated on a podium”. Few would have guessed Horton, or King, would take up a place at the vanguard of the rebels and anarchists now daring to show their face among the ranks of the athletes.
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Michael Phelps backed compatriot Lilly King’s attitude towards Russian Yulia Efimova at the Olympics on Monday and said more people should follow her lead.
King narrowly beat her, then slammed her rival, stoking controversy over revelations of Russian state-sponsored doping.
U.S. Olympic swimmer Lilly King is a teenager from Indiana.
Eventually, King became good enough to attract the attention of Looze at IU, where she entered as a freshman in 2015 and nearly immediately began showing remarkable improvement.
She was also briefly suspended after testing positive for meldonium earlier this year. Actually, as NBC correspondent Alan Abrahamson has pointed out, Efimova’s case was very similar to that of Jessica Hardy, banned for ingesting a tainted supplement in 2008 only to win medals in London 2012. Efimova settled for the silver, more than a half-second behind.
The bronze went to another American, Katie Meili, at 1:05.69.
King didn’t just call Efimova out, she stared her down before the two took to the blocks for their race. “It would have really been the end of a fairytale, a disgusting dream, if I’d won gold”.
And there they were, side by side with only a plastic floating rope between them in the pool. The medalists all climbed out of the pool together, but the Americans quickly got back to celebrating on deck. Here was Efimova’s account of herself, and you can accept it or not.
Finally, as the swimmers were picking up their Olympic credentials, King gave Efimova a quick pat on the shoulder.
“Apparently most of Eastern European athletes think they have to protect their hearts because training is contraindicated”, he said.
“I think that’s the moment”, Chapman said, “when it really sank in for Lilly that she’d done something big”. As for the second positive test, any possible sanctions were put on hold while the World Anti-Doping Agency does more research on meldonium, which was only put on the banned list at the beginning of the year. At Lloyd Pool outside of Evansville, six high schools shared the facilities, which meant King’s school, Reitz High School, was typically given just four lanes for its 35 swimmers to share. “For me it was very hard to swim today, and this is three weeks it’s been like insane”, she said. It ended with a dismissive nod from King, who took care of business in the water to win gold. Their last loss came at the 1992 Barcelona Games. And like King, Murphy shared his moment with a teammate: bronze victor David Plummer.
The row overshadowed a day that saw a first gold medal for the Brazilian hosts.
Efimova sought to defend her doping record. “I’m trying to get off my phone a little bit and focus on my race”.
In another result sure to stir the doping debate, China’s Sun Yang captured gold in the men’s 200 free. I once made a mistake and served my ban.
Yang surged to the front on the final lap, but Le Clos still managed to grab the silver.
Even on a red, white and blue night at the pool, Missy Franklin endured another stunning disappointment. One day in 2013 she went to a local GNC in L.A., and bought a nutritional supplement. But due to politics, or other reasons, she was still allowed to compete in the Olympics. But the times in the qualifying heats were surprisingly slow.
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She said there has been some backlash to her stance but that feedback has been largely supportive.
