Dear Sir/Madam
I am writing with reference to the article published on your newspaper regarding Chinese swimmer Shiwen Ye on 31st August 2012.
That article uses biased and sided "facts" to accuse Ye of doping. However, none of these so called facts can be served as the convincing proof to support the writer's accusation.
Does Ye become a star suddenly from nowhere? No. Ye already won the gold medal at 2011 World Aquatics Championships.
Can the doping history for Chinese show Ye took the drug as well? No. USA has a much "glorious" doping history than the Chinese do. Why the western media never use the blanket coverage like this time, to suspect them?
Why could Ye swim even faster than the male swimmer in the last 50 meters? This is an amateur question. For a 400m event, it is purely an issue of how to allocate the energy. If both Ye and another top male swimmer compete for a 50 meters event, can you believe Ye can win?
How can Ye make such a great progress, five seconds faster than the record she did one year ago? The Australian Ian Thorpe stated that he shaved off 5 seconds off his times between the ages of 15 and 16. Ye's Australian coach also believes Ye's success is based on the scientific training and her efforts.
I feel very sad for your editor to have selected and published this article. Furthermore, your editor even placed Ye's photo on the front page. Due to the popularity of your newspaper, I believe thousands of readers have read that. Some of my workmates questioned me in terms of this news in a not very nice way during the last couple of days. Some of my Chinese friends had the similar experience.
Overall, I believe the wester media use double standard on Ye's succuss. If she were American, she would have become a heroine now. But she is a Chinese!
Although Ye has passed the doping test, and some former western Olympic swimming gold medalists, also came to her defence, I do not see any follow up article in your newspaper. Why cannot you give your kiwi fellow a full picture? Can we call this the freedom of speech?