THEMA - Deep Clean the Olympics
PART 3 of 4 

Let's start where we left off by shining a light on the few but crucial words of Olympic sports legal eagle Darren Kane that I fundamentally disagree with. The quote in the stand-first on this Forum is backed up by this in one of three columns on the decades-old and thorny issue of GDR doping in The Age Down Under last year:

"There’s an important question about whether 'doping', by the definition given to the term at the time, even occurred among the East German Olympians of 1976 and 1980, if none of them glowed orange under the testers’ spotlight."

I agree with all the facts and many of Kane's opinions and takes in his thoughtful features but the notion that GDR swimmers (among many from other sports) might not technically have tested positive "under the testers' spotlight".

That is simply not the case, as a bounty of evidence shows us; indeed, those particular words of Kane's could only hold true if we strip the crime of its perpetrators, turn a blind eye to the official status of the institution where the crime took place (and the inseparable responsibility of the IOC) and interpret the very simple anti-doping rule in place for the 1976 and 1980 Olympic cycles in a way favourable to the prevailing malaise of "too hard, best let sleeping dogs lie".

And lie and lie and lie until their fangs rot under the corrosive spill of corruption that was State Research Plan 14:25.

We touched on those themes in the first two parts of those four-parter:

Part 1:

FORUM - Honeymoon Over: Time For IOC Boss Kirsty & Aquatics Allies To Send Doping Shame To Coventry

The sporting crime of the 20th Century, and biggest recorded systematic fraud in the history of sport, hangs over the Olympic president, her allies in Aquatics & other IFs. If they want a legacy worth having they must - at last, and at the very least - reach for reconciliation. Here’s why…

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

Part 2:

FORUM: Will Kirsty Coventry Break The Mould Of IOC Malaise On The Biggest Scam In Sports History?

No IOC president has ever found the courage & integrity to reach for reconciliation & recognition for those caught up in the GDR doping fraud. Can a woman reach for what the men who went before her failed to achieve, look Enhancement In the eye and wag her winning finger?

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

In Part 3, the arguments its for doing nothing and why they're either misguided or irrelevant...