Chinese teen Pan Zhanle made history in the men’s 100m freestyle final (Picture: Getty)
Australian Olympian Brett Hawke has questioned the legitimacy of Pan Zhanle’s world-record swim in the men’s 100m freestyle final, claiming it is ‘not humanly possible’ to beat such a strong field by a full body length.
Chinese sensation Pan, 19, blew his rivals away with a stunning 46.4-second victory to break his own record and clinch gold in Wednesday night’s pulsating race at Paris’ La Defense Arena.
Kyle Chalmers, Australia’s gold medallist at the 2016 Games in Rio, claimed silver, while Romanian David Popovici had to settle for a bronze medal after finishing third.
The teenager’s incredible swim came in the wake of a New York Times investigation which revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers competing at the Tokyo Games had failed a drugs test.
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While Pan was not named in the investigation, 11 of the 23 athletes who had failed tests are competing in the French capital this summer.
However, after Wednesday’s race, former Australian swimmer Hawke – who featured at the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games – took to Instagram to voice his ‘anger’ over the swim, which he argued was ‘not real’.
‘Listen, I’m just gonna be honest. I’m angry at that swim. I’m angry for a number of reasons,’ an irate Hawke told his followers in a video.
The youngster broke his own world-record swim to claim gold (Picture: Getty)
‘Look, my friends are the fastest swimmers in history, from Rowdy Gaines to Alex Popov to Gary Hall Jr to Anthony Irvin to King Kyle Chalmers. I know these people intimately, I’ve studied them for 30 years.
‘I’ve studied this sport, I’ve studied speed. I understand it, I’m an expert in it. That’s what I do, okay?
‘And I’m upset right now because you don’t win a 100m freestyle by a body length on that field. You just don’t do it. It’s not humanly possible to beat that field by a body length, okay? It’s not.’
Hawke continued: ‘So I don’t care what you say… this is not a race thing, this is not against any one particular person or any nation. This is just what I see and what I know.
‘These are my friends, these are the people I’ve studied, this is the work that I’ve put in for 30 years, I understand it. That’s not real.
You don’t beat that field. Kyle Chalmers, David Popovici, Jack Alexy? You don’t beat those guys by one full body length in a 100m freestyle. That’s not humanly possible, okay?
‘So don’t sell it to me, don’t shove it down my throat. It’s not real.’
US swimmer Jack Alexy was accused of ‘deliberately splashing’ Pan’s coaches (Picture: Getty)
Speaking shortly after his astonishing win, Pan accused his rivals in the pool of ‘looking down’ on him and ‘deliberately splashing’ members of the Chinese coaching staff.
‘On the first day, at the 4×100 relay, after we finished swimming I greeted Chalmers. He didn’t pay me any attention at all,’ Pan was reported as saying by The Telegraph.
‘Including Alexy from the American team – when we were training and our coaches were on the sides, the movements he made seemed like he was deliberately splashing water on the coaches – it just felt like he looked down on us. Can I say this?’
Pan later added: ‘I tried my best to get the best result. I was very surprised in the end that I broke the world record and it was a magical moment.
‘Last year I received 29 tests and never had a positive. From May to July, I had 21 tests, no positive. Today we received a second test already.
‘I don’t think there has been any impact (on me) because all the testing has been done in the normal procedure … So it’s not a big issue.’
China’s anti-doping agency, Chinada, have repeatedly rejected accusations of cheating by their athletes, branding recent New York Times investigation ‘extremely unfair and immoral’.
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