{"id":421243,"date":"2020-03-07T00:11:44","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T07:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=421243"},"modified":"2020-03-08T19:52:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T02:52:58","slug":"sun-yang-sprayed-by-social-media-criticism-as-fans-turn-on-their-fallen-star-say-sorry-to-mack-horton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/sun-yang-sprayed-by-social-media-criticism-as-fans-turn-on-their-fallen-star-say-sorry-to-mack-horton\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun Yang Sprayed By Social-Media Criticism As Fans Turn On Their Fallen Star & Say Sorry To Mack Horton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chinese fans have turned on Sun Yang<\/strong> in a “spray” of social-media criticism of the swimmer following the publication of the full report of the<\/a> Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)<\/strong> outlining the reasons why the three-times Olympic champion has been banned for eight years.<\/p>\n

Sun, who has long been adored by loyal fans and defended robustly between his positive test of 2014 and his latest anti-doping challenge, now finds himself called “a big baby”,”arrogant” and “rude”, \u00a0while the team about him is labelled “stupid and evil” in some of the posts calling on the swimmer and his entourage to show humility.<\/p>\n

Many also call on Sun to apologise to Mack Horton<\/strong>, the Australian Olympic 400m freestyle champion who staged a podium protest against Sun’s presence at the World Championships last July by refusing to pose for photographs with the Chinese winner of the 400m freestyle in the midst of an anti-doping process.<\/p>\n

Sun’s suspension, for reasons covered comprehensively in the links to Swimming World<\/em> coverage at the foot of this article, started on Friday February 28, when the CAS announced that it sided with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)<\/strong>\u00a0against a FINA Doping Panel decision of January 3, 2019 to issue Sun with a caution but fall shy of imposing a penalty following an acrimonious testing mission in September 2018.<\/p>\n

That mission ended with no urine sample being delivered and a blood sample submitted and signed off by the first Chinese man ever to claim Olympic gold in the pool taking that sample back from the chain of custody by Sun at the behest of his twice-banned dissector, Ba Zhen<\/strong> and two senior figures via telephone calls during the control session, namely Dr Han Zhaoqi<\/strong>\u00a0and Hao Cheng<\/strong>, national swim team leader at the Chinese Swimming Association (CSA).<\/p>\n

The South China Morning Post, in a report by Jonathan White<\/em><\/a>, notes how\u00a0support for Sun Yang had diminished since the publication of the CAS report in full on Wednesday as fans digest the full story. The Post reports:<\/p>\n

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On online portal Sina Sports, comments saw users “spray” Sun, as the Chinese internet vernacular describes criticism. Sina Sports has exhaustively covered the CAS report with each article seeing thousands of comments as the topic trends.\u00a0It was a similar story on microblogging site Weibo, often called the Chinese Twitter, where users expressed an antipathy not seen before towards Sun, with many pointing out the swimmer deleted all of his post-verdict posts purporting to offer new “evidence”.<\/em><\/p>\n

Others stuck the boot in, with Sun called a “baby” by many. User Yuan Guoqing was among them, recalling the lenient treatment the swimmer had through his career for crashing his SUV when driving without a licence and wearing his own sponsor’s clothing at the Asian Games, but not at CAS.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Comments included:<\/p>\n