At the 2012 Summer Olympics, in the third heat of the Women's 400m individual medley she swam 4:31.73, an improvement of two seconds over her previous best time at the 2010 Asian Games. In the final she won the gold medal and broke the world record (held by Stephanie Rice since the 2008 Summer Olympics) with a time of 4:28.43, an improvement of a further three seconds, swimming the last 50m in 28.93 seconds. Ye's time over the final 50m was compared to that of Ryan Lochte, the winner of the corresponding men's event, who swam it just under a fifth of a second slower in 29.10. This prompted allegations of doping against Ye. However, commentators pointed out that these two times were misleading. Lochte's overall time was 23.25 seconds faster, 4:05.18, than Ye's, and the times of all eight finalists in the men's 400m IM were at least 10 seconds faster than Ye's time. When Lochte hit the freestyle leg of the race, he had a comfortable lead over his opponents, whereas Ye was still a body length behind U.S. swimmer Elizabeth Beisel at that point in her race. Phil Lutton, sports editor of the "Brisbane Times", observed that Ye "had to hit the burners to motor past Beisel". Data analysis of performances of 2,600 swimmers by two University of Kansas researchers does not find Ye's improvement unusual.