Today is the day! It comes not a 0.001 too soon.

At last, the girls of The Last Gold, swimmers who battled to the only gold medal won by women of the West in the face of East Germany’s doping-fuelled dominance at the height of the Cold War of sport enter the International Hall of Fame as the first relay to be inducted as a quartet. 

There are excellent reasons to celebrate the achievements of Shirley Babshoff, Wendy Boglioli, Jill Sterkel and Kim Peyton at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games. On that score, it's a great day. 

But let it not blind us to the truth as the applause rings out in Fort Lauderdale. Let this day be a reminder of some hard home truths about the generations of women harmed because generations of governors and those who felt unable to speak truth to power because they valued going along to get along more than integrity and athlete welfare.

One obvious question: how could it possibly have taken so long - and what has yet to be called for, let alone done, by the governors, the Hall, the politicians, promoters, kit makers and others all too silent down the years, among them folk wearing multiple hats in a lifetime spent capitalising on their proximity to Olympic athletes?

And the bigger one: what's to be done about it and does swimming have leaders capable of embracing long-overdue integrity, truth and reconciliation?

The editorial in full follows...