Ye faced with doping questions

LONDON (AP):

Two finals, two golds. And all anybody wants to know about Chinese teen swimming sensation Ye Shiwen is whether she's doping.

After shattering the world record in the 400 individual medley on the opening day of the pool competition at the London Games, the 16-year-old broke her own Olympic record to take the 200 IM title yesterday.

Ye flashed smiles towards the crowd and sang her national anthem, then walked into a packed and hostile press conference where she faced one question after another over whether she is taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Ye is smaller than most swimmers at her level, but has never failed a drug test and Olympic organisers spent much of the day defending her, saying the suspicions were "crazy" and motivated by jealousy.

"Of course, I think this is a little bit unfair for me, but I was not affected by that," Ye said in comments translated from Mandarin.

Asked directly whether she had ever doped, she said: "Absolutely not."

She added that she has trained two and a half hours every morning and two and a half hours each afternoon for nine years.

It has paid off in London.

In Saturday's 400, Ye sliced through the last lap in 28.93 seconds - a split-second faster than American winner Ryan Lochte posted in the last 50 of the men's race.

Her overall time was 4:28.43, more than a second quicker than the previous world record set by Australia's Stephanie Rice at the 2008 Beijing Games in a now-banned bodysuit.

Her latest victory wasn't so emphatic. Still, she became the first Chinese swimmer with two Olympic golds. Ye was only third at the final turn, then surged ahead in the last lap of freestyle, her best stroke.

She clocked two minutes, 7.57 seconds, shaving 0.18 off her Olympic record set in Monday's semi-final. She was far off the world record set by American Ariana Kukors at the 2009 Worlds - the height of the high-tech bodysuit era.