Another dishonest tactic of this "writer" is that he bases much of the "impossibility" of Ye's achievement in that her "final 50-metre freestyle split that was faster than the gold medal-winning equivalent by Ryan Lochte in the men’s race". Naturally, many readers, as demonstrated in the comments below, have interpreted that to mean the Ye actually BEAT Lochte's time, which is hilariously off-base and untrue.
The fact is and what this "journalist" fails to mention is that Lochte swam the 400m individual medley over TWENTY seconds faster than Ye in their respective finals, and that he also BEAT her in the 100m freestyle split when considering BOTH laps.
It is well-known that Lochte often goes all out in the beginning of races, and fades near the end. That was well demonstrated in the 4x100 relay finals in which Lochte himself said he was "too excited" and over-swam the first 50m and therefore not leaving enough gas for the final lap, and as we all know, ended up losing the race to Yannick Agnel and the French team.
It is also well-known the Ye employs almost the opposite strategy. Like many other swimmers, she conserves her energy for much of the race and then explodes at the end. Like even John Leonard admitted, her splits from the other 300 meters were "quite ordinary". She did not expend all her energy at the beginning and was letting her competitors beat her until the final 100 meters which is when she made her move.
Given the different strategies employed by Lochte and Ye, it's much less surprising that Ye was able to swim tenths of a second faster on the final 50 meters, while keeping in mind Lochte still had a faster 100 meter split on the freestyle and was over 20 seconds faster overall in the entire 400 meters.
I was telling my brother I couldn't believe how big the swimmers (men and women) were-Phelps looks like he's wearing American Football-style shoulder pads. And he said "'roids".
