Sun Yang movie: Chinese drug cheat’s career to be made into feature film
Bespectacled Mack Horton could easily double as Clark Kent but don’t be surprised if Australia’s anti-drugs crusader is not portrayed as Superman if China brings the Sun Yang story to the big screen.
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Already given the flick from swimming, infamous Chinese cheat Sun Yang is about to be featured in a blockbuster flick about his turbulent times.
Banned from competing for eight years after he went on a rampage and destroyed his own doping samples before they could be tested for drugs, Sun’s spectacular fall from grace is going to be turned into a movie.
From red card to red carpet — that’s the latest news coming out of China – where the disgraced Olympic and world champion remains hugely popular despite being cut from the sport for his second doping offence.
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According to CCTV-6’s Chinese Movie New, the biopic will cover Sun’s entire life and career – including his run-ins with Australian arch rival Mack Horton – and the court case where it all ended badly for him.
The cast for the film has still not been decided with auditions delayed because of COVID-19, but production is scheduled to start next year – which will at least give Sun something else to do if he doesn’t win his appeal to race at the Tokyo Olympics.
It is still hush hush whether the towering two metre tall Sun will make his silver screen debut by playing himself, though he does fancy himself as an entertainer after belting out a few tunes on national television during Chinese New Year celebrations.
You can bet Horton won’t be winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor with the anti-drugs crusader no hope of being cast in the good guy role after he beat Sun for the Olympic gold medal at Rio in 2016 then protested against him during the medal ceremony at last year’s world championships in South Korea.
News Corp is also not expecting to be offered a cameo appearance after upsetting the whole of China by exclusively revealing to the world the official report that detailed exactly how Sun ended up in hot water.
Any motion picture about Sun is sure to be box-office gold for his army of fanatical fans in his homeland, but film critics may have to classify it as a comic fantasy if the scriptwriters don’t stick to the truth.
Love him or loathe him, Sun has been a human headline from the first moment he burst on the international scene so the directors have so much material to work with they could end up with an epic longer than Titanic if they include all his antics.
The first Chinese male swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal, Sun is a national hero in the world’s most populated country, having dominated middle and long-distance freestyle swimming for a decade, collecting three Olympic gold medals, 11 world titles and setting the world record for 1,500 metres.
But it’s his outrageous and boorish behaviour outside the pool that have made him a villain to the rest of the world.
He once triggered a diplomatic row with Japan when he called their national anthem “ugly” and was jailed in 2012 for crashing a sports car while driving without a licence.
In 2014, he tested positive to a banned stimulant and was secretly banned for three months then a year later, he was accused of elbowing a female Brazilian swimmer during practice at the world championships.
Horton accused Sun of splashing water in his face at Rio – setting off their long-running feud, which boiled over at last year’s world championships before the Court of Arbitration settled it for good by giving Sun his marching orders.