Ouch, see Xinhua
Double Olympic champion swimmer Sun Yang was excluded from the voting for China’s top athlete despite a successful record which includes three world championships titles.
Sun isn’t on a list of 146 candidates selected on Thursday to run for the prestigious CCTV Sports Awards. The organizers, China Central Television, announced that they “valued professionalism over athletic performance”.
Sun, who claimed men’s 400m, 800m and 1,500m freestyle world titles and went on to bag five gold medals in the National Games, was caught driving without a license in a car accident in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province early this month.
Apart from a seven-day detention and a fine of 2,000 yuan (about 328 U.S. dollars) by Hangzhou police, he has also been suspended from all the competitions and national team’s training and commercial activities.
“Sun Yang is an outstanding athlete but he failed to behave professionally outside the swimming pool,” said CCTV sports chief Jiang Heping.
A lot of happy qualifiers again tonight, many of them in their second, third or fourth event. Sarah Sjöström clocked 24.12 in the 50 free with Michelle Coleman chasing in 24.46.
