Susie O’Brien: It’s a disgrace Mack Horton is copping abuse from Chinese trolls merely for standing up for what’s right

MACK Horton made his point in the pool, beating Sun Yang to take out gold. How good was it to see a clean athlete fairly and squarely beat a drug cheat, asks Susie O’Brien.

Mack Horton shakes hands with Sun Yang after he wins gold in the Mens 400m Final at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Picture: Phil Hillyard

THREE cheers for swimmer Mack Horton for calling Chinese swimmer Sun Yang for a drug cheat.

It’s a disgrace that he’s copping so much abuse from Chinese trolls merely for standing up for what’s right.

Horton has been called a liar, a cheat, a loser and a snake, with Chinese people bombarding his social media accounts with invective and abuse.

RELATED: CHINA DEMANDS APOLOGY FROM HORTON

The fact that Horton has admitted the name-calling was partly a ploy to get under the skin of his long-time rival doesn’t matter.

Sun Yang was found guilty of taking performance-enhancing drugs in 2014, so he is entirely justified in raising the issue.

Many people are asking how Sun Yang can be allowed to compete at all in these games after his recent positive drug test.

Horton’s got more guts than the IOC, it seems.

Sadly, drug abuse has now tarred many Olympic sports – just ask Aussie Jared Tallent, who has only just been awarded the 50km race walking gold medal after it was awarded to drug cheat Sergey Kirdyapkin four years ago.

Drug testing of samples from as far back at 2008 continues to catch out cheats – and out of 31 athletes stripped of medals, 14 came from Russia.

Given the evidence of state-sanctioned drug cheating in Russia, you wonder how any of their athletes are able to compete at all.

Surely the IOC should have done what the Paralympics chiefs had the guts to do, and ban the lot of them?

Any athlete competing against a Russian will surely question how equal the competition really is.

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Already questions are being asked about Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, who swam the 400m individual medley in world record time of 4:26.36.

This is better than the previous record from Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen (also believed by many to be suspicious) by more than two seconds.

There’s also Irish boxer Michael O’Reilley, who became the first athlete to fail a drugs test at the games.

Ultimately, Horton made his point in the pool, beating Sun Yang to take out gold.

How good was it to see a clean athlete fairly and squarely beat a drug cheat? Let’s hope the same thing happens when the pair competes again in the 1500m on Saturday Australian time.

Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist.

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Twitter: @susieob