THEMA

The Source not Sauce of Swim Speed

Much as it is understandable that swimming bosses are keen to keep their legal powder dry, and many others in the sport are reluctant to give more oxygen to the Bonfire of Vanities lighting up for headlines for the Doping-friendly Games of late than any peacock parade deserves, the tide of promotional bile flowing with an $800m whinge from a crew denied unabated access to clean sport's rich fishing grounds, needs stemming.

Time, for example, to reclaim the word 'enhanced' for the Jedi. After all, this is what it means:

"An enhancement is an increase or improvement in quality, value, or extent".

Read that again: quality, value, or extent. On many levels, swimming, as we've known it, wins on all three measures in a fight with any form of 'sport' in which the observer has no idea where Dr. Jekyll ends and Mr. Hyde begins.

As we've known it means, in simple terms, sport in which cheating is held in check by official controls within a rule of 'law' (WADA Code, whereabouts, CAS etc), and with penalties served and rogues reminded of the cost of transgression whether they're pissing on everyone from inside or outside the tent.

Yes, that system has been abused by its very own creators and guardians down the decades. We must only consider the shaming wilful blindness of the IOC, FINA and other IF's in their abdication of responsibility in and for the East German Sporting Crime of the 20th Century.

No, it was not their fault that the GDR operated a systematic doping program and state secret that ultimately harmed the doped, those beaten unfairly by the doped - lifetime consequences galore for all the athletes, coaches, families and communities around the world impacted by a research program aimed at delivery a fraudulent showcase for a communist state and system so confident in itself that it had to build a wall to keep its citizens in.

It was, however, and remains, the 'fault' of generations of guardians a governors, that no meaningful efforts were ever made to acknowledge the role of an IOC-accredited laboratory, misplaced trust, denials of truth by sport politicians that led them all to conclude that to let sleeping dogs lie would be the safest policy in the interests of protecting the status quo and the Olympic Movement, regardless of the immense harm to athletes and the perception of sport as a safe and healthy place to guide one's children to. And then resolve to maintain that position for decades, long after the fraud and damage had been proven in immense measure.

It was the fault of all those folk that not a single one of them raised reconciliation as the proven best-response in the history of human tragedies of various kinds. It was their fault that generations of athletes, for the most part women - for the GDR crime was mostly aimed at women - were n to only robbed of health on the one hand and rightful rewards and lifetime status as a result of state cheating AND lack of any search for or process of justice.

The GDR was a misnomer, of course. Like 'enhanced', 'woman', and many other words most recently warped to mean something they were never intended for, 'democratic' was also used in the name of a country that was clearly anything but democratic [Ancient Greek: dēmokratikós - two roots: dêmos, or "common people", and krátos "power".

In sporting context, all of those three words have been adopted to convey meaning that is, to pout it politely, arguable. 'Power of the people' in sport means the say, engagement and size of stake afforded to athletes, coaches and others with a vested interest.

The imperfect, unsatisfactory and un-enhanced performance of 'clean-sport leaders' is a part of that picture, and, sadly, it's not just 'historic', as these prime examples in swimming remind us:

• FINA's woeful response to the Russian doping crisis in 2015 and 2016, one that led to the resignation of several senior leadership anti-doping and medical experts from the swim federation's panel of experts in victory of toxic politics over sensible science and a commitment to fair and safe play
• the China-23-go-free crisis of 2021 onwards and its handling by a World Anti-Doping Agency that lost a lot of trust the moment it accepted the word, verdict and questionable 'evidence' of a Chinese state security outfit before letting 28 positive tests for banned substances go no further than a file sealed with a stamp of 'mass contamination - confidential'.

The lack of trust is easy to fathom, and the anti-doping system and its signatories should rightfully be subject to challenge when they fails in their core mission of delivering fair and safe play through checks on banned substances and other forms of performance manipulating.

Those banned methods include some that guarantee a significant warp in what is often described as a level-playing field that recognises and rewards differences in natural and ethically honed capacities. And some get away with it. And some who might have don't in spite of the guardians because the media - including this journalist and those good folk in sport who refuse to play wise monkeys when see an injustice - do the job for those failed guardians.

None of the imperfections and challenges above, however, add up to support for throwing the baby out with the bath water by reaching for 'better to have no controls and call a freak show an experiment to help sell longevity to the masses with the consent of a minuscule minority of older athletes apparently happy to be test dummies because money, not morality, is their preferred currency.

The narrative the 'enhanced' project has pushed from go has included a sense that doping is rife in swimming, particularly among the very best, and its' simply hypocritical to keep up the 'pretence' any longer. Best solution: open the athlete lab and let the doctors and scientists - all of them above board, experts to the hilt, high ethics in tow - control it all.

So, let's test it. Hands up how many of you think that Katie Ledecky, Lani Pallister, Summer McIntosh and Simona Quadarella, the top four finishers in one of the utmost thrilling distance-freestyle races I have ever witnessed, broke the rules of their sport?