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Swimming

Despite its widespread recreational popularity among people of all ages, swimming remains a sport where China has yet to truly make its presence felt on the international scene. Unfortunately, the biggest international story in Chinese swimming has been the doping scandals of the 1990s.

A strong performance in swimming could really help China's effort to top the overall medal standings, since the sport offers a shot at 84 medals. While it toils to join the top tier, China is a relative unknown since it often keeps its best swimmers away from major international competitions. This practice also draws suspicion from the swimming community about continued doping, since swimmers that stay away from these competitions also avoid the drug tests that go with them.

Not surprisingly to anyone who's been to a municipal pool in China, the team's strongest performance in the 2004 Olympics was in the breaststroke. China's sole Olympic swimming record was set by Luo Xuejuan in the 100-meter breaststroke in Athens. She has since retired, but has passed the mantle to Qi Hui, who finished fourth in Sydney in the 200m breaststroke at the age of 15. The team's top man is Zhang Lin, a distance freestyler who spent some of the interim between Athens and Beijing training in Australia, a country that along with the United States dominates in the pool.

Chinese name and literal translation: 游泳 youyong (swimming)

History in China:

Swimming is enjoyed widely in China, though more as a relaxing and low-impact way to keep in shape than as a competitive sport.

Some of swimming's popularity can be attributed to Mao Tse Tung, who was known to be an avid, and maybe a talented, swimmer. In an effort to show that he, and by was in great shape and still capable of leading the Communisty Party, Mao took a widely publicized 15 km swim in the Yangtze River in Wuhan in 1966. He claimed to have completed the swim in 65 minutes, a remarkable pace.

With five medals in the 1988 Seoul games, followed by nine in Barcelona, China's swim team seemed to be following somewhat in the footsteps of the diving squad in becoming a force to be reckoned with in international competition. But in the 1990s, 32 swimmers were caught using performance-enhancing drugs and coach Zhou Ming was banned from the sport for life. In 1996, the team's medal count slipped to six; in 2000, the team won no medals in Sydney, and it won just two in Athens.

Olympic team coach: Zhang Yadong

Athletes to watch: Qi Hui (women's breaststroke and individual medley), Zhang Lin (men's long distance freestyle)

Olympic Venue: National Aquatics Center, Olympic Green

Olympic Test Event Dates: Swimming China Open, February 1-5, Beijing

Sydney 2004 Medal Count:
1 gold (women's 100-meter breaststroke)
1 silver (women's 4 X 200-meter freestyle relay)

Sport Organizations:
Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA)

Links:
Chinese Swimming Association

Athletes:
Qi Hui 齐晖
Wu Peng 吴鹏
Xu Yanwei 徐妍玮
Yang Yu 杨雨
Zhu Yingwen 朱颖文