FORUM: What The IOC & World Aquatics Won't Do, SOS Will - Hail The Medallists Denied
THEMA: TRUTH, RECOGNITION, RECONCILIATION: We recognise the following women in our PODIUM-CLASS PANTHEON as champions and medallists denied their rightful rewards by proven GDR systematic doping
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.
Yes, that's a long sentence but then the women concerned (yes, there were some men impacted too, and we'll get to that down the line), have been asked to hold their breath since the GDR's state-secret, systematic doping program was confirmed by one of its leaders, Dr Manfred Höppner, who was convicted of his crimes in the 1978-2000 German doping trials in Berlin. Ten years before that, he had not only confirmed that banned substances were used on many thousands of athletes but that an IOC president had even asked him to lead a study that would inform Olympic bosses as to where to draw the line between doping and sports medicine.
The fox who was asked to guard the chicken shed is long gone, as is the president who invited him and many other GDR colleagues into the 'Olympic Family' to help keep sport clean, when in fact, they were there to keep the state secret safe, and ensure East German would punch astronomically beyond its weight in several sports, swimming among them when to came to women who had been plied with male steroids, sometimes from as early as 11 and 12 years of age.
So, enough of the history lesson, paid subscribers can find links to much more history and campaigning below should anyone need reminding.
Today, we make the top of this Forum visible in the public domain as we do what the IOC, FINA, World Aquatics, Halls of Fame and other repositories and libraries of Olympic history and results have failed to do: gone beyond a simple sentence placed at the end of some GDR profiles of the many swimmers celebrated for their medals and actually recognised the women denied by the sporting crime of the 20th century for their true achievements, at Olympic, World and European levels.
It is important to note, as we start with Montreal 1976 as the first of the Olympics impacted by State Research Plan 14:25 (official from 1974, worked on for some 10 years before that and rolled out in some athletes from the late 1960s, the records saved from the Stasi shredders show) that none of the women who have campaigned for justice for all those affected (often quietly, always on a roller-coaster of many lows and far fewer hopeful highs down the decades), have called for East German opponents to be stripped of their medals.
Along the line in this exercise, we will recall the official result on race day and will recall the stories of the women who made the podium but are not listed in our recognition podiums below. The table reflects the medals they would have won if the IOC, World Aquatics and others had had the courage to acknowledge fact and reached for a truth, recognition and reconciliation process.
In 2021, the women were given the most hopeful message they had ever heard from a sports leader. This is what Husain Al-Musallam, president of FINA (later rebranded World Aquatics in a 'reform' process that remains in the shallows when it comes to prioritising athletes and their experience in Olympic sport) told me in an interview for The Times:
“Fina understands the concerns of athletes who have competed against others subsequently proved to have cheated. Athletes work their entire lives for a mere chance to compete for a medal, yet alone win one. So when athletes are denied the reward they worked so hard to achieve, Fina must do everything it can to right this wrong. Once established, the independent Aquatics Integrity Unit will investigate the matter to determine what recourse may be taken in support of Ms Davies and all similarly-situated other aquatics athletes.”
Well, it seems everyone's been so busy, what with setting up integrity units so they can kick to the curb a whistleblower's concerns over one of Al-Musallam's right-hand men, and then kick to the curb the ruling of an EU-member government that deemed Antonio Silva unfit for office in sports governance at home, on integrity grounds... and so on and so forth.
Craig Lord
It's all a huge disappointment for women in the sport of swimming - and not just the women.
All those men p- and they still are mostly men - have been so busy that another half a decade goes by without any action, just as it was in the decades of FINA before Al-Musallam et al. No change, no reform, the same old, same old of the women who wait yet for a sign of integrity among the leadership of the sports they excelled in without recognition.
State of Swimming will now point them in the right direction. Today, we launch The Podium-Class Pantheon in our SOS Hall of Fame.
In this first exercise, we reflect the finishing positions of swimmers who have never had to have an asterisk placed beside their name because they failed an official doping test, nor is there any other evidence of the kind to be found in abundance in the records kept by the GDR itself, of links to a doping system, let alone one run by the state as an official secret with the clear intention of defrauding the rest of the world.
I use the word 'official' when referring to doping tests because many of the GDR swimmers who made Olympic, World and European podiums in the 1970s and 1980s, did indeed test positive in official tests. The results, however, were recorded, and kept hidden at the IOC-accredited laboratory in Kreischa, Saxony.
Other documentary evidence includes confessions of doctors and coaches at the helm of the four or five key swimming hubs in the GDR out of which emerged the vast bulk of the nation's 'success' in the pool.
We begin our project of truth, recognition and reconciliation by honouring the following women in their rightful places on the podium at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games:
THE PODIUM-CLASS PANTHEON
Montreal 1976 Olympic Games
The only result on the women's program that remains unchanged from the result the IOC and all history vaults have left in place as the official record of those races at Montreal is this, a Soviet sweep that reflected the technical superiority of the Soviet swimmers at the time and the fact that breaststroke, the stroke of most resistance , does not favour the builds and angles of buoyancy of swimmers carrying bulk muscle 'in all the wrong places', and particularly in the absence of excellent technique, and particularly over 200m.
The Relay Details:
A few notes on the Montreal 1976 swimmers who would be promoted to being recognised as champions and medallists in their events, some as follow-up defeats for years after they had claimed Olympic gold for the first time:
Home Games Queens. Imagine the impact of that throughout a lifetime:
- Canadian Nancy Garapick a double Olympic champion on backstroke at her home Games as one of the greatest Olympians of her nation all-time.
- Cheryl Gibson, who in recent times served a member of the FINA Bureau, who would also have become an Olympic champion at a home Games
- Enith Brigitha, of the Netherlands, is finally recognised as the first black swimmer ever to finish at the helm of an Olympic swimming race – imagine the wave of encouragement and cultural shift released by the energies of Anthony Nesty, Anthony Ervin, Cullen Jones and Simone Manuel … but decades earlier…
- Shirley Babashoff, of the USA, a five-times gold medallist (imagine that being celebrated as deserved), teammates Wendy Boglioli and Karen Moe (who becomes the first swimmer ever to retain an Olympic butterfly title, four years after gold at Munich 1972, the clock showing a more believable level of progress on the clock) promoted to champions, while several other Americans would find themselves on the podium, including Melisse Belotte, double backstroke champion in 1972 and locked out of the medals in Montreal, in 5th over 200m in 1976 in a time 4sec slower than the GDR winner, Belotte’s 1972 World-record win now some 7sec off the pace of the best of the GDR, where national-record standards had improved 11sec in four years.
