Who is Sun Yang’s arch rival Mack Horton, the Australian swimmer who refused to stand beside China’s world champion?
- The 23-year-old caught international headlines by refusing to take the podium with Chinese swimmer Sun Yang
- Yang, 27, is embroiled in a cheating controversy but was allowed to compete and the two have been feuding for years
One wonders if the next time Mackenzie “Mack” Horton and Sun Yang take to the pool against each other again they might want to throw on Taylor Swift’s song “Bad Blood”.
The two have been feuding since as early as 2014, when Sun was first suspended for three months by the Chinese Swimming Association for testing positive for a then-banned stimulant called trimetazidine. Yang and the CSA came under fire for not properly disclosing his ban in a timely manner.
Australian swimmer Mack Horton grabbed international headlines around the world on Sunday when he added another chapter to their bitter rivalry.
Horton, 23, refused to join China’s Sun, 27, on the podium after the 400m freestyle final at the 2019 Fina World Aquatics Championships in South Korea. Horton, who lost to Sun by 0.73 of a second in Sunday’s opening night of the swimming portion of the eight-day competition, also refused to shake Sun’s hand.
Sun is awaiting a hearing in September at the Court of Arbitration of Sport, after the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed against a decision to clear him of a separate doping offence. Various reports have alleged Sun destroyed vials containing his blood samples in front of testers with a hammer at the demand of the swimmer’s mother, which Sun has denied. Last week, Australia’s Daily Telegraph posted a 59-page leaked report that was written by the Fina doping panel following a hearing in which Sun was alleged to have refused to comply with drug tests and accused testers of being biased.
Horton was born in Melbourne, Australia, and began swimming at the age of 10 after overcoming a fear of water and by 13 had broken his first Australian record. Horton’s coming of age party was the 2012 Junior Pan Pacific Championships where he broke the meet record in the 1,500m freestyle. A year later he competed in his last junior event at the World Junior Championships in Dubai where he won five gold medals and one silver and broke five meet records.