FORUM: Ford Triple; Doubles For Bunaciu & Klevakina; Champion Status For Davies, Osgerby, SWE & GBR Relays + Holmertz
THEMA - Truth, Recognition, Reconciliation: What the IOC & World Aquatics Won't Do, We Will - in Part 2 of our recognition for the athletes, mainly women, denied by GDR doping, we arrive in Moscow and count the medals due in a world where the recorded truth we know delivers fair play & justice
We start part 2 in this latest FORUM series with the same long sentence from part 1 as a reminder to the blazers, guardians and governors of Olympic sport and swimming of what they have failed to do for decades, and continue now to fail to get done:
Olympic and swimming leaders are so very busy - what with all those meetings to attend and all that politicking to get done at the Winter Games in Milan - there's just no time to honour five-year-old promises to women who have waited decade-upon-decade for truth, reconciliation and recognition of the injustices and mass fraud that denied them their rightful rewards but has remained the official record of Olympic sport and swimming for more than half a century since the deceit first made its impact.
Today we turn to Moscow 1980, the swimming results of which you can find in this order in historic accounts and lists, and celebrated as such in every official repository of swimming history and related Halls of Fame, in which you will not find many of the names honoured in what follows.
Consider his before we honour those who followed banned substances into the wall:
- Moscow was a Games at which GDR women's swimmers claimed 11 out of the 13 golds and 26 medals in total out of a possible 35 medals available to any one country. The gap from gold to first no-GBD swimmer home is gulf-like, as our Mind The Gap table below shows.
For those reading this and feeling sympathy, even most-understandable human empathy, for those on the GDR doping side of the coin who actually took the medals home to ceremonies and celebrations at the airport with one of the main architects and distributors of the doping program, Manfred Ewald (later convicted of bodily harm to minors in Germany's doping trials), among others in on the secret (and going to extraordinary lengths to keep it under wraps, not without the help of IOC naivety or compliance, both applicable), please be reminded of this; the women campaigning for justice for the past 36-50 years in one form or another, said long ago that they do not want the GDR swimmers to have their medals stripped away from them (and nor do we).
They (and we) do want truth and recognition to be the essential pillars of reconciliation, however, which is why we follow up our file on Montreal 1976 last week with this roll of honour for the women denied by a thumping level of unfair play in Moscow.
Into the SOS Hall of Fame, alongside the podium place they ought to have been officially recognised for a long time ago had the IOC shown any understanding of or appreciation for the value of the kind of reconciliation it praised the Rev. Desmond Tutu for on his passing but failed to embrace in Olympic sport [the meaning of reconciliation] except when it came to one man here, another there ... :
As our table suggests, there would have been three golds, not one, for Michelle Ford (AUS), and champion status, too, for Carmen Bunaciu (ROU), Olga Klevakina (URS), Ann Osgerby (GBR), Elvira Vasilkova (URS), Sharron Davies (GBR, and long-time campaigner for justice), and the quartets of Carina Ljungdahl, Tina Gustafsson, Agneta Mårtensson and Agneta Eriksson (SWE); and Helen Jameson, Margaret Kelly, Ann Osgerby and June Croft (GBR), as well as Per Holmertz (SWE).
There's also a great deal more to celebrate for Sweden, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Romania, the women of the Soviet host nation, and Poland. Yes, the boycotted Games went ahead without swimming force the United States, but that is not the fault of any athlete, and should never prevent us from celebrating the achievements of those who did compete, recognising what happened, the truth underpinning the official outcome, including honours denied by proven and well-documented fraud backed up by court-room and other forms of confession(s).
It is not hard to imagine the impact such recognition would have had (and still could have) on the lives of those recognised in the light above had Olympic guardians acknowledged what happened on their watch (and with an IOC-accredited laboratory right at the heart of hiding the illicit instead of serving its true purpose of catching those who see gain through illicit means); what happened to the athletes, mainly but not exclusively, women, as a result of the fraud plotted, planned and rolled out by East Germany's political elite.
The authoritarian regime and its state security apparatus captured and coerced not only the medical/scientific community, but also coaches and many others at a time when every travelling team included officials, staff and even athletes co-opted by state-security police (Stasi) to spy on their teammates and report back to HQ, sometimes with horrid consequences.
Within its jurisdiction and beyond it, the IOC has contributed to a negative and even painful experience in sport and life for thousands of athletes, coaches, families and communities as a.result of wilful blindness and refusal to reach for reconciliation through truth and recognition.
You will find far more detail one that stay in our archive, in stories like these:
Craig Lord
And here in Unfair Play by Sharron Davies, with me:
Author profile page
The Recognition Honour Roll In Detail:
Photo l-r: three Australian 800m freestyle World record holders of the 1970s - Jenny Turrall, Michelle Ford and Shane Gould, at the launch of Turning The Tide in 2024 - courtesy of FAIRPLAY Publishing and publisher Bonita Mersiades, founder and organiser of the Manly Writers' Festival
Extended Photo Caption: Shane Gould, right, remains the only woman ever to have won five Olympic medals in individual events in the pool at a single Games, and she did so when the very best in the world were in the lanes next to her. In this picture at a book launch in Sydney in 2024, the winner of three gold, a silver and a bronze - three World records in the mix - stands beside two fellow Australians who competed in the era immediately after Gould's, at a time when the GDR an a state doping program as a state secret that delivered dominance for shoals of teenage girls fuelled from a very young age by testosterone that gave them a 'male' edge on their rivals.
Centre is Michelle Ford, who, with the GDR removed from the count, would have emerged from boycotted Moscow 1980 with three solo gold medals to join American Debbie Meyer (1968), Gould and, justice be done, American Shirley Babashoff (see link to last week's FORUM below) as only the fourth 'unassisted' woman to achieve that triple feat in Olympic waters. To the left is Jenny Turrall, who in the 1970s set five 1500m freestyle records - a record count in that event until American Katie Ledecky took the standard to six in 2018 - and two over 400m. Turrall claimed the World 800m title and silver in the 400m in 1975 (the 1500m for women would only join the global showcase in 2001, and only be added to the Olympic program at Tokyo 2020ne.
Here's where you can read much more about Michelle's story, including the details of a stellar 1980 Olympic campaign alongside coach Bill Sweetenham as they plotted a course to 800m Olympic gold ahead of the GDR machine, Ford the only western woman to finish ahead of an East German in the pool at those Games - in her own words (and mine):
Michelle Ford and Craig Lord
Turrall remained 800m World record holder between 1975 and June 1976, six weeks out from the Montreal Olympics, when the GDR's Petra Thümer improved her best time by more than 20 seconds in less than a year to claim a ticket to the Olympics at East German trials by leaving the global mark 3 secs inside the Australia's best on 8:40.68. Then, two weeks later at U.S. Olympic Trials, Babashoff shaved another second off the standard to become the first woman inside 8:40, in 8:39.63. In Montreal, Thümer took gold in the 400 and 800m ahead of Babashoff, their 8:37.14 and 8:37.59 times inside the American's World record, the new standard back in the possession of a swimmer the wider world had never heard of until six weeks out from the Olympics. Jenny Turrall, who had been knocked by injury that season, made the final, finished eighth of eight and then, at the ripe old age of 16 and a couple of months, retired from the sport.
Montreal 1976:
Craig Lord
Moscow 1980
Photo: Per Holmertz (SWE) - elevated to champion status in our truth, recognition and reconciliation process
That concludes the latest additions to the SOS Hall of Fame we'll be building through 2026.
More on the events of Moscow will be added to this file for subscribers in the course of the coming weekend, events in Milan-Cortina and others just beyond the closing at the Winter Olympics binding the past with the present and future of Olympic sport.
Next Wave: World Championships, 1973, 1975 and 1978. The series will also consider the coaches impacted and deserving of recognition they were also denied. We will also look at why and how we can confirm that there was just one swimmer (and his coach) in the GDR during those years who was able to say 'no, no me'.
