Swimmer Qi left short of breath by lofty training ideas
MELBOURNE: Chinese swimmer Qi Hui has blamed bizarre training methods for her poor form at the World Championships in Melbourne.
After 2004 Athens Olympic champion Luo Xuejuan's retirement in January, the 22-year-old was regarded as China's best medal hope at the Championships.
To almost everyone's surprise, Qi finished in a woeful 25th position in the 200 meters individual medley heats on Sunday. Her result of two minutes and 19.05 seconds was 7.13 seconds slower than her gold winning time at the Doha Asian Games last December.
"My form has been inconsistent since I started training with new methods," said Qi after her disappointing opening race.
"My muscles was totally stiff during the competition and I just found that I dropped behind the other swimmers by half a body length at the beginning of the race."
Zhang Yadong, head coach of the Chinese swimming team, admitted that Qi's form was terrible. "It might have something to do with the new training methods."
The new training methods were described by coaches as "living in the plateau, training on the plain."
In order to achieve a breakthrough, the promising Qi was brought to Shanghai, where she lived in a room imitating plateau conditions, in other words with reduced levels of oxygen, but she trained in normal pool conditions.
"She never performed well during the three-week training period," said Qi's coach Ye Jin, who regretted the decision to attempt the new method.
Ye said that Qi always felt tired while training in Shanghai: "She failed to make any progress, and lost her normal level."
Although Qi got a few weeks to recover from the after effects of her plateau life ahead of the World Championships, she was still not herself while in Melbourne.
"She didn't feel comfortable. She could not exert all her strength during the race," said coach Ye.
"She had never been out of gear in such a way. We won't take the risk of trying new training methods again, especially before major events. It was a costly error."
Qi is scheduled to take part in the 200 meters breaststroke preliminary tomorrow and the 400 meters individual medley on Sunday.
The suffering swimmer said she had no idea if she would feel better before the race, but she said that she would of course try her upmost to win.
Xinhua
(China Daily 03/28/2007 page22)
