Mega scandal at the Swimming World Cup

The defeated Australian Mack Horton caused a scandal at the start of the World Swimming Championships and intensified his protest against the highly controversial world champion Sun Yang. At the award ceremony after the 400 m freestyle final, the Olympic champion refused to shake the hand of the doping-affected Chinese and to take the obligatory photo of the medal winners. While the Italian Gabriele Detti climbed up to Sun on the podium, Horton stood there and stared straight ahead.

Horton (left) did not climb the podium. © AP / Mark Schiefelbein

“It's okay if people don't respect me personally. But at the award ceremony you should respect my country,” criticized Sun afterwards. But Horton, who had already denounced his rival at the 2016 Olympics as a “doping cheater,” simply couldn’t help himself: “Frustration is probably the right word. I think you know why. You know what our relationship is like. His actions and how they are handled speak louder than anything I would ever say.”

The three-time Olympic champion Sun is threatened with a subsequent ban before the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in September because of a sample that was possibly destroyed with a hammer. The world association FINA, which had given Sun an extremely lenient three-month ban for a positive doping test in 2014, acquitted the almost two-meter-tall athlete. The World Anti-Doping Agency WADA lodged an objection against this before the CAS (“unbelievable and unacceptable”).

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Mega scandal at the Swimming World Cup

There was a scandal at the swimming world championships in Gwangju, South Korea, on Sunday.

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