Swimming world championships 2019: Mack Horton’s feud with Sun Yang boils over at podium
Tensions between Aussie Mack Horton and his Chinese rival Sun Yang explode.
Olympic champion Mack Horton refused to mount the podium for the medal ceremony of the men 400m freestyle alongside China’s Sun Yang as tension between the bitterest of enemies spilled over into outright enmity at the world swimming championships in Gwangju.
Horton accepted his silver medal but refused to go through the standard rituals of standing to attention as the Chinese national anthem sounded for the fourth time in the 400m freestyle and the 10th time overall for Sun at the world titles. Nor would he join in the customary photographs, standing to one side as Sun and bronze medalist Gabriele Grothe smiled for the cameras.
Even Sun seemed bewildered as Horton stood his ground, though the Australian then joined in the poolside lap of honour in front of photographers, keeping his distance from the Chinese champion.
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All this was taking place as the pool was already in uproar after arguably the greatest female athlete in the history of swimming, Katie Ledecky, suffered her first international defeat in any freestyle race over 200m, by Australia’s Ariarne Titmus.
Horton was left frustrated but far from speechless after the man he accused three years ago of being a drug cheat, Sun, emerged as the world 400m freestyle champion for the fourth time in South Korea.
Horton swam what was arguably his most courageous race since he defeated Sun at the 2016 Rio Olympics to place second, but he made little effort to hide his disgust as Sun sat up on the lane dividers and sent his fists crashing into the pool in seeming celebration. Or it might just have been a crude imitation of the hammer blow that came crashing down on his blood samples after a drug-testing kerfuffle veered out of control.
Sun’s very presence at these championships has caused widespread unrest among many athletes, who believe he should not be allowed to compete until the Court of Arbitration for Sport delivers its findings on the incident first reported by The Sunday Times that members of his entourage had used a hammer to shatter blood vials during a drug-testing raid gone horribly wrong.
Whatever the truth of Sun’s claims that members of the drug-testing team were not properly accredited, there is widespread dismay and anger that his solution to the problem was to smash the drug samples.
The Australian had made it painfully clear right from the outset that he objected to Sun’s presence in the pool. And it scarcely needs to be said that if FINA had suspended Sun for these titles, Horton would have been world champion.
Before the start, Horton had stood at the side of his block, pointedly facing directly at Sun. And then, after an epic battle in which Australia’s other representative Jack McLoughlin had actually led through the 150m mark, Horton was the only swimmer in the field not to shake Sun’s hand.
“I think you know what the rivalry is like,” said Horton. “I just said over there his actions, and how it has been handled, will speak louder than anything I’ll ever say.”
Asked what his overriding emotion was, he replied: “Frustration is probably it. I think you would know in what respect.”
Sun later took his intense swimming rivalry with Horton into the realms of diplomacy, claiming the Australian’s refusal to mount the podium was disrespectful to China, saying in Chinese, that the Australian had “acted disrespectfully”.
“Yes, I was aware that the Australian athlete had dissatisfaction and personal feelings towards me,” Sun told a press conference in Gwangju last night.
“It was unfortunate because disrespecting me is okay but disrespecting China was very unfortunate and I felt sorry for that.”
Australian head coach Jacco Verhaeren admitted he had no idea Horton was preparing to make a stand at the victory ceremony.
Swimming - Bad blood boils over as Sun wins 400, Horton refuses podium https://t.co/pHekN63zBB pic.twitter.com/4uZ0ut2M6K
— Sports Breaking News (@sportbreaknew) July 21, 2019
“Nobody actually knew, that was his idea to do that,” said Verhaeren. “Let’s put it this way…I understand him very much. He has been very strong and vocal about this in the past. You can only respect him for what he does.
“Mack stands for what he stands for. Nobody can take that away from him, nobody should. But we move on and into the next races.”
Inevitably Cate Campbell, who also has been outspoken about the problem of drugs in swimming and how it is being handled — or rather not handled by FINA — spoke out in favor of Horton.
“I support clean sport and I support swimmers standing up for their beliefs and I think Mack did an incredible job and we’ll take it as a win for Australia,” said Campbell, speaking after she had anchored Australia to its second gold of the night in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay.
It remains to be seen what, if any action, FINA takes as a result of Horton’s one-man demonstration against drugs in the sport. Still, FINA’s own position on this issue is extremely precarious and it is likely that any action it takes against the Rio Olympic champion could rebound on it in dramatic fashion. American Lilly King, the breaststroke world champion, has been as unapologetically anti-drugs as Horton has and it would take little provocation by FINA for her to rally the bulk of the American team to take a stand.
Galling as the defeat was, Horton had arguably his best day in the pool since his Rio triumph. He did not even qualify to swim this race at the Australian selection trials but, after making the team as a relay swimmer, was given permission to contest it.
Sun, who had been pressured early by McLoughlin, was never further back in the field than second and by the halfway mark he had taken the lead.
Challenges came from everywhere, with Lithuania’s Danas Rapsys making a move at one stage, so too Italy’s Gabriele Detti, but in the end it was left to Horton to throw down the final challenge.
Ultimately, it was not enough, with Sun winning in 3:42.44, with Horton 0.73sec behind in 3:43.17. Detti, who claimed the bronze at the Olympics and at the last world titles in Budapest, was again third in 3:43.23.
“I’m getting there,” said Horton when congratulated on his performance.
“To be honest I thought I had a bit more in me. I think I’ve got to grow a pair and get going on the first 200m. My strength has always been the back end so I probably need to enhance the strength and work towards working that weakness, which is the front end as well.”
There has been no love lost between Sun and Horton since the incident at the Rio Olympics where the Chinese champion “splashed” Horton in the training pool and the Australian ignored him, insisting he had no time for drug cheats.
Horton was pilloried by Chinese swim fans who painted him as a racist and demanded an apology, which was not forthcoming. That led in turn to the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper, writing scathing editorials attacking Australia, although sanity was finally restored when another Chinese newspaper, Changiiang Daily, called for calm, saying the dispute was simply between two athletes, not sovereign states.
Still, Horton’s allegations were given fresh relevance in January when The Sunday Times broke the news that Sun’s entourage had smashed vials of blood samples with a hammer as the legitimacy of drug-testers who had called on him unannounced was called into question.
Sun supporters have repeatedly argued that he has been caught up in the crossfire of an attack by Western nations against FINA, the sport’s less-than-vigilant governing body, though it is difficult to fathom how any dispute can be resolved by smashing drug-testing samples.
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