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Olympics 2012: Controversy trails Ye Shiwen, 16, who beat Ryan Lochte's freestyle time

Breaking a world record is obviously a towering achievement for anyone. Ye Shiwen, the Chinese swimmer who set a new standard in the women's 400-meter IM and took gold Saturday night, went beyond.

Shiwen is a 16-year-old girl, and she didn't just set the record by more than a second, finishing at 4:28.43; she beat men's gold-medal winner Ryan Lochte down the stretch, finishing her final 50 meters in 28.93 to Lochte's 29.10.

Ye won the 200 IM in Shanghai at last year's world championships and wasn't among the pre-race favorites for the 400.

The achievement, predictably, has prompted questions over whether Ye used performance enhancing drugs—a theory for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Yahoo! Sports' Charles Robinson noted that by Sunday morning, the speculation had kicked into overdrive, in part because of China's doping problem in the 1980s and '90s.

Regardless, Ye is the gold-medal winner, and her win stands.

"I'm still young," Ye said. "After training I'm sure I'll be even better."

She was nearly three seconds ahead of silver medalist Elizabeth Beisel of the United States.

"This is a big step for Chinese swimming," Ye said.

Lochte, who beat American rival and fourth-place finisher Michael Phelps handily, noticed.

"We were all talking about that at dinner last night," Lochte said. "It was pretty impressive. And it was a female. She's fast. If she was there with me, I don't know, she might have beat me."

Added U.S. men's swimming coach Gregg Troy, "Heck of a swim. You notice stuff like that... You guys can do the research. I think that's probably the fastest women's split ever."