Swimming at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games:

In the early to mid-90s China broke through to dominate women’s swimming. This culminated at the 1994 World Championships where Chinese female swimmers won 19 medals including 12 golds. Skeptics noted that Chinese men had not won a single medal at these championships and pointed the similarity of these performances to those of swimmers of the German Democratic Republic during their glory years of the 1970s and 80s. The most outspoken critics also noted that a number of coaches from the now discredited East German regime were now plying their trade in China. These fears appeared to be proved true when eleven athletes tested positive for dihydrotestosterone at the 1994 Asian Games.

Le Jingyi was the only one of this generation of Chinese swimmers who arrived at the Atlanta Olympics as the clear favourite. Although she was not swimming as fast as she had done in 1994 she was still comfortably the best over the distance and was a relatively easy winner of the Olympic title.

Sandra Völker of Germany took the silver medal ahead of US team captain Angel Martino.