Horton said earlier this week he had no “time or respect for drug cheats”.
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Before the confrontation in the pool, Horton was asked how he felt about doping violators Sun and South Korean Park Tae-Hwan competing at the Games, and responded: “I don’t have time or respect for drug cheats”. “I have a couple more races this week so I need to relax a little bit and focus on those but it’s very exciting”. “He wasn’t happy about that so he kept splashing me, and I just go in and did my thing”.
In 2014, Sun was suspended for three months for testing positive to banned medication. 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. At last year’s world championships in Russian Federation, he was accused of an altercation with a female Brazilian swimmer in the warm-up pool and then he failed to show up for the 1,500 freestyle final.
He then edged out Sun by just 0.13 of a second in their gold medal showdown and repeated the claims after the race.
Verhaeren revealed Horton had predicted his 400m win.
“His remarks of Sun is widely believed to be a part of his cultural heritage in that he was practically nursed race prejudice at his mother’s breasts [sic]”, the page read before it was re-edited.
Guy, aged 20, went out hard to try to set the pace, but the world silver medallist at this distance faded as Australia’s Mack Horton won gold in 3mins 41.55secs.
No one knew how to react except Chinese fans, who quickly flooded Horton’s social media accounts with frantic cries for an apology and outright disbelief at Horton’s cheek.
He’s Australia’s first gold medalist at the Rio Olympics He’s also a giant green-and-gold target for Chinese indignation.
The Americans had led at half-way, but Bronte Campbell overhauled Vollmer on the third leg and handed over a lead that sister Cate never looked like surrendering to Ledecky. Emma McKeon and Brittany Elmslie were the other two members of the champion quartet.
Miley was overhauled in the final 25m of the women’s 400m individual medley as Katinka Hosszu of Hungary won in a world record of 4:26.36.
Five-time world champion Katinka Hosszu set a new world record in the women’s 400 meter individual medley final after finishing in a time of four minutes, 26.35 seconds, beating Maya Dirado of the U.S., and Spain’s Mireia Belmonte Garcia.
What a night! Thank you for all the congratulations!
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Peaty broke his own world record in the 100m backstroke heats (57.55) and could have lowered that time still further in the semifinal but eased off at the end.
