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Lars Hamer

Zhang Yufei arrived at Paris’ La Defense Arena pool determined to defend not only her Olympic titles, but her reputation, too.
Known in her native China as the butterfly queen, Zhang was one of the 23 swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, before being cleared of wrongdoing.
Since that incident came to light this year, the Chinese team have been subject to a high number of anti-doping tests and their performances in general have nosedived.
Zhang, however, has been among the few to shine, reaching the podium for a third time in Paris in Thursday’s 200 metres butterfly – despite revealing afterwards she had a fever that hampered her preparations.

Repeating the gold she won in Tokyo proved beyond her, as Summer McIntosh of Canada emerged as the next sensation. But Zhang managed her third bronze of the Games, having already come third in the 100m butterfly and the 4x100m freestyle relay.
She was born in Xuzhou, in the country’s eastern Jiangsu province, on April 19, 1998. Both her parents were swimming coaches, so by time she was three, she was already learning to swim.
“It was probably both of them who threw me into the pool together,” Zhang said in an interview with Chinese media.
Her father was often away from home leading his club swimming team at national competitions, but when Zhang was just four, he died in an unexplained accident.
Although her memories of her father are limited, Zhang used swimming as a way to remember him.
By the time she was five years old, Zhang had graduated to the Xuzhou City Swimming Team and was receiving regular training. Seven years later, she took part in the Jiangsu Provincial Games and competed in six events, winning two gold, three silver and one bronze.
That stand-out performance got her admitted to the Jiangsu provincial team as their youngest-ever member.
Everyone around Zhang said she was destined for greatness, but at a 2012 Swimming World Cup Series meet in Beijing, she stunned the nation.
Zhang came second in the 400m freestyle, beating Liu Zige – who by the Paris Olympics still held the world record in the 200m butterfly. One year later, at only 15 years old, she was in the national team.
In 2014, at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, the Asian Games in Incheon and the World Swimming Championships in Qatar, Zhang won two silvers and a bronze.
However, in 2015, Zhang’s life hit another unexpected turn as she was diagnosed with a minor case of scoliosis, causing the muscles on her back to develop unevenly.
Her coaches developed a training plan to help her swim with an irregular spine and she began to improve both in the pool and physically. After six months, she was doing pull-ups, something she had not managed before.
Zhang qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympics and finished sixth in the 200m butterfly. But by the time she joined the national team in Australia for a two-month training stint in January 2018, and for reasons unknown to her, she had come to hate swimming.
When she saw the pool, she said, she would cry. Her results started to dip.
At the 2019 World Championships in South Korea, she finished way down the standings, 26th overall, in the 200m butterfly. Her time of two minutes, 14.20 seconds was about 10 seconds slower than she would prove to be capable of.

“I just didn’t want to swim, I’d see the pool and just get so angry,” she said.
Rather than taking a break, Zhang’s coach changed her training. She went back to basics and just trained jumping off the block and underwater kicking.
Zhang said these sessions gave her time to think and reflect. Soon, her state of mind improved and she started incorporating more physical training.
And it paid off.
Not many win two Olympic golds in one day, but that is what Zhang did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
In the first of those two races, Zhang broke the Olympic record in the 200 metres butterfly, with 2:03.86. Less than two hours later, she was atop the podium with her teammates after they won the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay.
Three months before the Paris Olympics, The New York Times reported that ahead of the Tokyo Games in 2021, 23 Chinese swimmers, Zhang included, had tested positive for TMZ, a banned drug that can aid performance.
It said the swimmers, 11 of whom are competing in Paris, were cleared of wrongdoing by Chinese doping authorities, who said they ingested contaminated food, an explanation accepted by the World Anti-doping Agency (Wada). That version of events was confirmed by Wada.
But in Paris, the Chinese team have reportedly been subject to an average of seven doping tests per day.
“Look at the facts,” Zheng has said in Paris.
“World Aquatics and the [International Testing Agency] have investigated our Chinese athletes and the whole thing many times and tested them many times before we came to the Paris Olympics.
“Each one of us was tested 20 to 30 times in two months, three to four times a week on average.”
She voiced concern over how she was perceived.

“I competed very well with friends from other countries. Now I come to participate in the Olympic Games, I’m very worried that my good friends look at me with different eyes … that they do not want to compete with me or watch my races. I’m more worried about the French people. I think the Chinese do not deserve this.”
The team have performed below expectation in Paris, with notable exceptions being Zhang and Pan Zhanle, who had been underwhelming until producing a stunning world record to win 100m freestyle gold.
Some have been a shadow of their former selves, making Zhang’s medal tally all the more impressive.
Zhang has made a plea in Paris for empathy, saying: “Chinese athletes or foreign athletes, they would not want to destroy all the hard work they have put in over the years by doping.”
After that, it was back to the water to do her talking there.


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Zhang Yufei on the podium for the third time at the Paris Games on Thursday. Photo: Xinhua

Zhang Yufei enters the La Defense Arena as she prepares to race at the Paris Olympics. Photo: Xinhua

Zhang Yufei in full flight as she swims butterfly, the stroke for which she is renowned. Photo: AFP

Zhang Yufei leaves the pool after swimming in her 200m butterfly semi-final in Paris. Photo: Xinhua

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Zhang Yufei will defend her 200m butterfly title at La Defense Arena later. Photo: Reuters

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Paris Olympics 2024

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The butterfly queen is happy to do her talking both in and out of the pool as she continues to accumulate medals


The butterfly queen is happy to do her talking both in and out of the pool as she continues to accumulate medals.


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Zhang Yufei (張雨霏)

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Profile | Paris Olympics: who is Zhang Yufei, Chinese swimmer battling rivals, critics and fever?

The butterfly queen is happy to do her talking both in and out of the pool as she continues to accumulate medals