Array
Last Sunday a Chinese runner named He Jie won a gold medal in the Beijing half-marathon. But yesterday He and three athletes who finished just behind him were stripped of their medals after video of the finish suggested the other three runners let him win. Here’s video of the finish.
4月14日，北京半程马拉松比赛现场疑似出现假赛，引发大众质疑。视频中，比赛最后几百米，中国选手何杰原本落后，但3位外籍运动员中有人回头摆手疑似示意何杰反超，又示意队友减速。最终，何杰在默契中完成反超，以一秒优势夺冠。
这一戏剧性画面引发大众质疑。… pic.twitter.com/dRWxbBcIhB— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) April 14, 2024
The tweet reads:
On April 14, the Beijing Half Marathon was suspected of match-fixing, which aroused public doubts. In the video, in the last few hundred meters of the race, Chinese athlete He Jie was originally behind, but one of the three foreign athletes turned around and waved his hand, apparently signaling He Jie to overtake, and then signaled his teammates to slow down. In the end, He Jie completed the overtaking in tacit understanding and won the championship with a one-second advantage.
This dramatic scene has aroused public doubts.
He Jie is currently a member of the Chinese men’s marathon national team, the champion of the Hangzhou Asian Games, and the men’s national record holder.
The Chinese runner, He, is one of the country’s top long-distance runners and will soon be heading to the Paris Olympics.
Today the NY Times has the results of a much more intriguing scandal involving Chinese swimmers. The 2020 Olympics were delayed a year because of the pandemic. In early 2021, about 7 months before the Olympic games, 23 of China’s top swimmers tested positive for a banned drug called TMZ which can boost performance. China investigated the doping and cleared all of its own athletes.
Several of the athletes who tested positive — including nearly half of the swimming team that China sent to the Tokyo Games — went on to win medals, including three golds. Many still compete for China and several, including the two-time gold medalist Zhang Yufei, are expected to contend for medals again at this year’s Summer Games in Paris.
China acknowledged the positive tests in a report by its antidoping regulator, saying that the swimmers had ingested the banned substance unwittingly and in tiny amounts, and that no action against them was warranted.
