FORUM: Cheers To Pioneers High On Natural, Enhancement-Free, Pathfinding, Human Capacity
This week's Thema - why it's a 'no' to the Enhanced Games; "History in 100 ... Series" - the fight in female pioneers Durack, Wylie, Fletcher, Kellerman et al; & our Timeline on the pioneers of pace in May throughout history - celebrating Donna de Varona
THEMA - Fair Sport, a commentary
When Michael Phelps said "No Limits!", he didn't mean, 'strap a rocket to my backside, pump me full of banned chemicals and watch me go!'. He meant something more like this, among other things: 'Watch me 'fly, freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke beyond anything anyone has ever done by setting no limit on what I imagine I can achieve, by taking my natural talent and then using my capacity to hone those gifts through dedication, determination and discipline, to use any positive or negative that comes my way as fuel to crash through the next barrier, all the while harnessing an openness to learn from a wise teacher (Bob Bowman) in hard and happy times.'
Not Michael's words, of course. Just my take on what his natural state, situation, circumstance and process enabled him to achieve. Do I trust that he didn't have a hidden rocket strapped to his backside? Do I trust that every swim was not accompanied by a cloak of invisibility to conceal a body boosted by banned chemicals? Do I think he and his entourage left no known and legal stone unturned in pursuit of excellence in their day?
Yes, to all that, with your full understanding, I believe, that if any athlete or entourage is proven to have broken that trust, the gloves will always be off as far as I'm concerned; any athlete, any nation.
The questions of trust are put because there are those who think that either "all" or "most" athletes 'cheat' so why not just open the chemical cupboard and opt into the Enhanced Games? There are many answers to that question, and they include more questions. For example:
- will the EG ask athletes to waive liabilities should their health take a turn for the worse?
- how would such a contract fit with the notion that medical experts will monitor the health of athletes in a way that will make the EG safer than the world in which the WADA Code operates?
- have we not seen it all before?
The answer to the latter is 'yes, we have'. It was called State Research Plan 14:25 and one of the pillars of 'how we justified what we did' when the German Democratic Republic's systematic doping program, its architects, facilitators and victims made it to a Berlin courtroom in 1998-2000, was, to summarise excuses given by the two most senior men convicted, Dr. Manfred Höppner and Sports Minister Manfred Ewald, his: the training environment was far safer because the athletes [being plied with doping - from 11 years of age in some cases among girls swimming] were monitored continuously; and we were only making sure the athletes were given "supporting means" commensurate with the demands that elite sport puts on the human body.
The real outcome: around twenty years of sport during which the GDR's women thumped almost all rivals into submission, denied prizes, rewards, lifetime opportunities and, indeed, even Olympic qualification (target times were raised by other nations to levels well ahead of their time on the basis of GDR standards) to generations of rivals.
The real outcome: many of the 'champions' suffered serious health problems; athletes were dispensable - turnover of national teamsters was rapid, in part because of health problems; in part because of the constant drive to go further, to take more, to find new enhancements, to use lesser athletes to tests new pills and potions before they were given to the most promising 'natural' talents on the manipulation factory belt.
This week's Forum - includes our "History of Swimming in 100 ... Series", which celebrates the pioneers and pathfinders of Stockholm 1912, the first women to swim at the Olympic Games, and our Timeline, which salutes the World-record feats of some of the greats of swimming who became pioneers of pace in the month of May throughout history.
Our Thema speaks to their natural achievements and human capacity to excel and find ever-new ways of excelling while recognising that red lines are drawn for good reasons.
May 21 will witness the launch of the Enhanced Games, an exercise I consider to be a freak show Olympians should reject. And not just that. If enhancement means any acceptance of substances and methods banned by the WADA Code, then this is a moment for the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee and all its member International Federations, World Aquatics among them, to draw a very clear line: any athlete, former Olympian or member of an affiliated federation in the Olympic sports realm, who takes part in the Enhanced Games gets an automatic ban from the Olympic realm.
And yes, that means anyone such as James Magnussen, the Australian who has eyed with an Enhanced future. Should he embrace one, we should not then see him turn up at Australian trials for LA 2028 for a comeback shot as a Dolphin. As we know, porpoises need no pills to be pioneers of pace in the natural world. So it should be in the pool.
Magnussen has edged his argument for participation - in return for a fat pay check for proving drugs work - towards the tired old argument "how prevalent is drug-taking in sport...". In one interview he trotted out the results of surveys in track and field and told us everything we already knew. For me, in the context of fair play and drug-free sport, it was like listening to a bloke quoting crime stats and then using them to justify setting up a company called 'Robbers 'R Us'.
Among the many aspects of EG that make me want too throw up is the use of arguments, intended or not, that ape the excuses athletes have heard from rogues breaking anti-doping rules all too often: 'come on, take it... it's safe - and let's face it, they're all at it'. No, they're not. And enhanced sport is not sport. It's fake and a precursor to escalation.
And that's why a lifetime ban from Olympic sport is justified for anyone who competes in the EG? New rules please! They will have broken the code of honour that forbids substances and methods banned under the WADA Code because they convey an artificial performance enhancement and advantage over others, regardless of whether the outcome is gold not fourth, silver not 12th, bronze not 7th, and all other possibles in between. It's cheating. Full stop.
It is an undeniable fact that some athletes cheat, some entourages encourage and rely on doping and other forms of manipulating natural performance beyond the legal advantages available to all athletes in 2025. The arguments that 'all athletes cheat', 'most athletes cheat' hold no water, in my opinion.
Can Magnussen tell us that he did not cheat and did not take performance enhancers during his career as a Dolphin? I hope so. And assuming what we all assumed, that he was clean, his victories are surely part of the evidence that tells us that a great many swimmers who finished behind him, some by a relative ocean at Olympic Games and World Championships and Commonwealth Games, not to mention Aussie events, were also among those who were no on drugs.
Yes, it is also an undeniable fact that athletes and coaches, particularly when encouraged by governors, are susceptible to 'enhancement' if they feel they can justify it while claiming that the result is 'natural' when clearly it is not. Harm does not always take the form of multiple miscarriages, liver damage, heart failure and the like. As it was with the GDR, the harm is often felt by the greatest numbers in sport among the victims who played the game within the rules and were robbed of rightful rewards while their guardians not only stood by and watched the thieves make their getaway but subsequently never pressed for justice.
Enhancement is not always 'doping', of course. I led the shiny suits protest from the gun in February 2008 and wrote my first 'the suits must be sunk' feature the following month on approach to the World short-course Championships in Manchester that showed us just about everything we need to know about non-textile materials in the swimmer/swimming context. It took until Rome 2009 world titles, on the eve of a farcical 43 World records in eight days, before Bowman's 'Michael won't be back until a date for suits sunk is set' forced FINA's hand to honour a vote to ban non-textiles and such torso cover for men. Swimming was restored to swimmers on January 1, 2010, but the impact of the shiny suits remains crystal clear in the sport's World rankings and national and international record books to this day.
Of what we know so far from the project's public statements and website, the Enhanced Games - rejected by the IOC, World Aquatics and others - is, in my view, an exercise in using athletes as an experiment paid for by wealth individuals to determine how humans might be enhanced, 'achieve more'*, be 'healthier'*, live longer, and so on and so forth. What we learn from athletes and sport can - as it is with advances in military technology - then be transferred to the couch potato and other legends in their living rooms.
The asterisk is there because 'achieve', 'more', 'healthier' are words from a large lexicon describing how and where and in what way we look to sport to show us all the pathway to better human 'being'.
I was invited, all expenses paid, to attend the launch of the EG. I declined. Others won't and doubtless there'll be some media, among others, reaching for every 'come on, why not... after all... ' out there. If the Freak Show must go on, let it. I won't be writing on the races nor making comparisons with swimming within the WADA Code (no, Magnussen would not have 'broken the world record' if he swims a 20.7 or a 46 flat - the rules are not the same).
However, I'll be watching - for the moments when the mask slips and we see all too clearly those reasons why it ought not to be.
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Beyond the above commentary this week:
- For our "History of Swimming in 100..." series, we recall Stockholm 1912 and the arrival of women in Olympic waters; who and what made it happen, who voted, what led up to the vote and what women had to endure to get themselves top the Games.
- And, in our Timeline of World records set in every passing week throughout history, among the pioneers is Donna de Varona, who we celebrate in our archive file
Craig Lord
Craig Lord
