The drama surrounding Sun Yang continues to heat up with an 81-year-old Australian swimming legend describing how she would have handled the controversial Chinese swimming star.

During the World Aquatics Championship in South Korea this week, Sun has been snubbed twice a major way by his competitors at the medal podium. First by his arch-nemesis Australian swimmer Mack Horton and then by British swimmer Duncan Scott.

Sun reacted to Scott refusing to shake his hand or join him for a photo by yelling at his rival before smirking to him as they walked off stage: “You’re a loser. I’m a winner, yeah?”

When asked about Sun antics, Dawn Fraser, an Australian swimmer who win Olympic gold three times in the 100m freestyle in 1956, 1960, and 1964 had this to say: “If I had been there, I would have kicked him in the backside.”

Fraser added that she didn’t even think that Sun should be competing at the world championships.

“He’s got a Court of Arbitration (of Sport) hearing in September and I feel that (swimming’s world governing body) FINA should have stepped him down until that court case is over,” she said.

“If he’s proven not guilty that’s fine, he can come back to swimming.”

A smashed blood vial

The hearing Fraser refers to is over a drug test that Sun “missed” last year.

However, that drug test wasn’t so much “missed” as abruptly aborted, according to a Sunday Times report from January which said that testers arrived at Sun’s home in China last September for a routine out-of-competition test, but that after drawing blood Sun disputed the accreditation of one of the nurses. A clash then ensued, ending with Sun’s mother directing his security guard to smash the vial of blood with a hammer.

Sun’s lawyer has dismissed the newspaper’s account of the events, accusing the Sunday Times of “malicious reporting” with intent to tarnish Sun’s reputation and violate his privacy. The Chinese Swimming Association has similarly stuck up for Sun, calling the report “fake news.”

Tasked with looking into the incident, FINA, the world’s swimming governing body, determined in January that it would “never know” the truth of what had happened and let Sun off with only a warning.

However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has appealed this decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which won’t hear the case until September. Sun’s team has pressed for a public trial, a result against Sun could result in him being permanently banned from the sport.

Drug cheat

Sun is China’s most successful swimmer, winning three Olympic gold medals, two in London and one in Rio, not to mention various other accolades including a slew of world titles. The 27-year has cultivated the image of an emotionally vulnerable bad body, contributing to his rock star status in his own country.

That emotional side was fully on display at the 2016 Rio Olympics where Sun just lost to Horton after Horton had called him a “drug cheat,” a reference to the three-month suspension Sun served in 2014 after testing positive for a stimulant called trimetazidine.

Chinese net users have lashed out yet again at Horton, bombarding his Instagram account with vile insults and even death threats. It remains to be seen if they will treat Fraser the same way.