Video courtesy Helen Li
“Sun Yang– The Swimmer,” covers the most decorated Chinese swimmer in history through a successful, but tumultuous period of his life and training. Part two of the documentary, embedded above, begins as Sun trains for the 2014 Asian Games and follows him all the way through to the end of this summer, finishing off as Sun gets ready for the 2015 Kazan World Championships (where he ended up a double-gold medalist in the 400 and 800 freestyles).
The documentary examines his friendship and rivalry with Korean Park Tae Hwan, his performance at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, and, inevitably, his 2014 positive substance test, banning, and subsequent comeback.
As we already knew, Sun was banned on May 17, 2014 for a blood sample containing Trimetazidine, a drug used to treat angina, or plaque buildup in the arteries. The drug was only added to the WADA banned list in 2014.
According to the documentary, when he was seventeen, Sun was diagnosed with viral myocarditis, an inflammatory heart disease. The substance was being used to treat his condition.
In the video, his coach Zhang Yadong says, “Sun Yang was definitely using [the banned substance] by accident… He had absolutely no reason to use such a substance. It was absolutely unnecessary.”
The documentary goes on to follow Sun through his training in Australia, which also proved controversial, and his return to the world stage.
Part one of the documentary is only available in certain countries, but, part two, complete with English subtitles, is fully functioning.
SwimSwam – maybe its a stupid question but why cant we post youtube links in the comments?
anonymoose – you can, as far as I’m aware. Bobo does it all the time.
yes i see other people doing it but the funny thing is i tried to post exactly this documentary in the comments of the last sun yang article but it didnt work.
anyways its not a big deal and i just wanted to know if there would have been some kind of restrictions.
thanks for replying so quickly as well.
Edit – it looks like your comment IS actually live. Here: http://swimswam.com/sun-yang-injures-foot-withdraws-from-aquatic-super-series/
May just have not shown up right away, because of our spam filter. Comments with multiple outside links often have to be approved before they’re visible to the public.