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Credibility Crumples With Olympic Podiums & A FINA ‘Leader’ Hides Under His Bed
- Updated: November 22, 2016
Editorial
“The numbers are just impossible, incredible,” said Gian-Franco Kasper, an executive board member of the International Olympic Committee. “We lose credibility. Credibility is a major concern.”
That’s the line in this New York Times article highlighting the impact of positive tests revealed since the International Olympic Committee ordered the retesting of samples from the London 2012 and Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Fallout from a long-term failure to deal with doping and dopers and those who assist them coincides with news from a different place and a different realm, a realm closely connected to the malaise and woe at the helm of international sports governance.
This is the day that a FINA Bureau member is found hiding under his bed at home as police raid his home to find kit alleged to have been stolen from his country’s Olympic team.
And that in a season in which the FINA Bureau member for Brazil has been ousted at home by legal authorities seeking truth in another inquiry into alleged misdemeanours.
Back to doping. This month has witnessed a further 16 positives from Beijing 2008 and 12 from London 2012, some of that harking back to old-style drug cocktails of turinabol and stanazolol and point to the Russian doping scandal and confirmation of a crisis geographical and cultural in nature.
To Mr Kasper, we say: No, you don’t ‘lose credibility’ … that was lost a long time ago by ignoring the problem and letting it grow into a monster. Credibility should not need to be a major concern at all – get anti-doping right, ban all who test positive from the Games, ban for life the folk in the shadows, the doctors, politicians and others encouraging and helping athletes to cheat; bar sponsors who support cheats; make it a rule that all such deals fall on a positive test; make it a rule that all monies earned from competitive must be returned upon a positive test… and so on and so forth.
There is so much MORE the IOC could and should have done, the IOC and its member federations, of course. FINA having failed and failed and failed again to achieve common penalties for ‘stars’ and the unknown swimmer, failed to deal with the GDR past, the China crisis, the current state of cheating in the sport.
FINA in focus: Julio Maglione, top right, is the latest in a line of …
