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Blanket ban for China's Sun

Beijing - China's swimming authorities have slapped a blanket suspension on Sun Yang, banning him from all training and competition after a car the Olympic champion was driving without a licence collided with a bus, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

The 21-year-old freestyle swimmer has already been ordered to spend a week in detention and pay an unspecified fine following Sunday's crash in the eastern city of Hangzhou involving a Porsche Cayenne SUV he said he had borrowed from a relative.

Sun has been "suspended from all the competitions at home and abroad; suspended from the training of the national swimming team; and suspended from all the social and commercial activities involving the national team", the Chinese Swimming Administrative Center (CSAC) was quoted as saying in a statement.

CSAC, part of China's state sports administrative body, also "fully supported" Sun's detention as decided by the Hangzhou police department, the report added.

A popular sports figure in China, Sun was suspended in February from all commercial activities for breaching a "series of team rules".

According to Xinhua, Sun had fallen out with his long-time coach Zhu Zhigen who felt the swimmer had too many commercial obligations.

The 400m and 1 500m freestyle champion at last year's London Olympics has apologised for the incident, requesting for an opportunity to "correct" his "mistake".

How the country's elite behave is a sensitive topic in China, where the government has been trying to fight public anger at the perception that the richer and more privileged a person is, the less likely it is they will be punished for breaking the law.

We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
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