Top 20 Most Significant Swimming Stories Of 2016: #15 – FINA, Same As It Ever Was?

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Updated: December 18, 2016

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016.

We started with progress, the heights of Katinka Hosszu and the Canadian Comeback, turned to a lack of progress in The Swimming Selfie, then considered inspiration and the impact of Michael Phelps on a generation knee-high when he was racing in his first Olympic final. Our list then turned to the theme that will not go away: doping and how to deal with it. We’ll be returning to the topic later in our countdown but yesterday we considered the Australia/ China interface and questions of faith & fair dinkum.

Today, we look at the folk responsible for the environment of all the entries in the list above and most to come, too: FINA, the international federation is the focus of a review, reform or replace debate among its membership. The official custodians of the sport, as opposed to that much bigger body of custodians at the water’s edge and in it day in and day out, have let the side down on many fronts for a long period of time.

In 2015, FINA leaders refused (and continues to do so) to even acknowledge a request made by hundreds of the world’s top coaches via the international association that represents them (WSCA) to submit to an independent review of structures and finances with a view to assessing what might be done to make the federation fit for purpose in the coming century. No response, no polite letter, no acknowledgment whatsoever. Head, Buried, Sand. The Same As It Ever Was since FINA established its professional office in the middle of the last decade of GDR doping.

In 2016, three leaders of the FINA Doping Review Board resigned. They said their advice on how to deal with the Russian doping crisis was ignored before the Rio Olympics. Those resignations are the nugget of this No15 entry in our top 20. The unprecedented resignations sparked another editorial, headed ‘FINA can neither survive nor be rebuilt without cultural revolution and reform’.

Our No15 entry could have chosen so many issues from those covered in our FINA Future compilation of features on the federation’s handling of matters but none comes close to the damage wrought by its inability to get to grips with a doping crisis that FINA leaders to this day describe in these terms (words used by four people currently at the top table): “Swimming has no special problem with doping.” You could have fooled me. In looking for a way to explain why, I go back to July and reprint the following Olympic essay penned on the cusp of Star Wars at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for those who want to be reminded of where and what the trail of woe leads to:

No 15 – Same As It Ever Was

Editorial & Olympic Essay – July 2016

Today I’ll be taking our sons swimming at a fine and fun facility not too far away from Kreischa in Saxony where once the town clinic was one of the key hubs at the heart of the German Democratic Republic’s State Plan 14:25 doping program.

How times have changed. There are no world-class swimming programs pumping out Olympic and World champions and record holders in these parts nowadays. Thank God for that.

Hereabouts, you don’t have to look far to find both those who would defend criminality (and even do so on the basis that ‘the rest of the world wasn’t clean anyway’) and those who tell how life as an ambassador in a tracksuit ruined their lives and those of their loved ones, too, in far too many cases (see the archive file at the foot of this editorial).

How relevant is the GDR in 2016? Vastly so as we stare at the wreckage of the Russian doping crisis and await the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport and then the International Olympic Committee.

The little blue pills back in the 70s and 80s were Oral Turinabol. And the Russian doping cocktail of the hour? “The Duchess” contains … yes, oral-turinabol, as well as oxandrolone and methasterone.

I ask the same question as that posed by a colleague I find common ground with on many issues but with whom I fundamentally disagree when it comes to the Russian doping crisis and response to doping and bad governance in general. The question posed by WADA Reports and the McLaren Report of this week: what’s to be done?

The answer from Alan Abrahamson, FINA’s first journalist of the year and a man who heartily defended Justin Gatlin’s right to be racing still when so much of the rest of the world points to him as American hypocrisy personified, appears to be clear: a hard line on Russia, including a blanket ban that would catch the innocent with the guilty, would be unfair, even illegal and would be damaging to the Olympic Movement.

My reply: a soft line on Russia, allowing most (for that is what would happen) of the show to go on as if nothing had happened would surely be unfair, too, and might even be deemed illegal some fine day – it would also catch the innocent with the guilty, only in this scenario the damage would be done to clean athletes from round the world – yet again – and to the Olympic Movement.

From Abrahamson comes this question:

“If you’re going to ban Russia, you might want to ban Kenya while you’re at it. Unlikely? If so, how is it remotely fair to ban Russia?”

In a tweet he also raised the issue of Turkey, as in why Russia if you don’t ban Turkey from Rio 2016 because of its 40 positives in 2013.

Abrahamson does not ask: spot the difference at the heart of the woe in those nations?

Answer: the state.

That status raises the temperature – and quite rightly so – beyond anything else that could do so barring the bright thing up above at midday on a clear blue-sky scorcher.

Russia – no longer ready to chink glasses with the IOC once more. [All images are stills from “Red Herrings” by ARD]

Abrahamson goes to lengths to cite friend of Olympic bosses and Russian President Vladimir Putin chapter and verse. The President doth protest too much, methinks.

Cast your eye over this lot:

“Russia is well aware of the Olympic movement’s immense significance and constructive force, and shares in full the Olympic movement’s values of mutual respect, solidarity, fairness and the spirit of friendship and cooperation.

“This is the only way to preserve the Olympic family’s unity and ensure international sport’s development in the interest of bringing people and cultures closer together. Russia is open to cooperation on achieving these noble goals.”

Well, you could have fooled me. Noble goals. What, like issuing a decree to border control so that all doping-test samples be opened and checked before leaving the country?

If Putin is serious, it’ll surely be the Gulag for Yuri Nagornykh, Russian Olympic Committe Executive and Deputy Sports Minister of the whole of Russia. Vitaly Mutko, the Sports Minister, too, came in for very steep criticism and stands accused of knowing about the system he has said did not exist.

Their fate will, ultimately, rest with Russian attitudes. As Putin puts it, this is all about the ” … values of mutual respect, solidarity, fairness and the spirit of friendship and cooperation”.

Shame he didn’t ask Nagornykh if that’s how he felt about his jobs before appointing him, given that the minister now stands accused of being a king-maker in a doping process involving cover-up, the Olympic Committee member’s name and thumbs up on the paperwork granting official, state permission for clean urine samples to be collected for later purpose.

Two Sides Of A Coin, one less polished

Abrahamson sets off on his trawl of McLaren Report day with the words “The most important note from the compelling report released Monday [is that] … there is no recommendation about what, as Lenin might have put it, is to be done”.

The most important note? Perhaps he overlooked the following:

The Moscow Laboratory operated, with the intention of protecting doped Russian athletes from detection, within a “State-dictated failsafe system” The Sochi Laboratory for the Winter Olympic Games of 2014 operated a unique sample swapping methodology to enable doped Russian athletes to compete at the Games The Ministry of Sport, the report states, directed, controlled and oversaw the manipulation of athlete’s analytical results or sample swapping, with the active participation and assistance of the secret services, the FSB (the Russian federal security service), the CSP (Centre of Sports Preparation in Russia), and both Moscow and Sochi IOC-accredited Laboratories Yuri Nagornykh – Russian Olympic Committee executive and deputy sports minister – ordered the collection of clean urine samples that were then used as swaps for samples of urine that contained banned substances Swimming is listed on a chart with 18 ‘disappearing positive tests’ (see chart below and for explanation): 9th worst of all 30 sports listed with such cases, track and field and weightlifting by far the worst, with more than 100 cases each. The Moscow laboratory was asked to keep all 10,000 athlete samples in a letter of December 2014, but by the time WADA investigators got there, 8,000 had been destroyed.

Here are a few more things in Abrahamson’s campaigning editorial that demand scrutiny:

GDR, state plan 14:25: abuse victims on both sides – yet a call for reconciliation has fallen on deaf ears

He asks whether Russians given “The Duchess” were even aware. Great question, for many in the GDR did not know what they were being given. Does that mean that Surley Shirley (Shirley Babashoff to those who know her as an outstanding athlete) should forever be considered sour and second best and look up to Kornelia Ender as one of the greatest of all-time? Would it have meant that the GDR should not have been collectively punished, even if that had extended to sports where doping was not seen as part of the problem?

And on that score, Abrahamson raises gymnastics and synchronised swimming as he stares as the chart of ‘disappeared positives’ and notes ‘no issue’ and therefore how could such innocents be lumped in with the rest if the state-run saga. Well, not with too much of a struggle, in fact, gymnastics and synchronised swimming both sports that belong to the club of those with doping positives on their score in world sport, including Russians.

Abrahamson raises this, too: “McLaren ‘did not seek to interview persons living within the Russian Federation. This includes government officials,’ page 8. So the report is deliberately one-sided?”

To raise the question is reasonable though not in those terms: on what basis does he reach for the word ‘deliberately’, one wonders. The more pertinent question to ask of people who know just how dangerous all of this has been for the whistleblowers, according to the people who genuinely fear for their safety would be: were your investigators disappointed with the appalling lack of cooperation they experienced in Russia when the first two WADA reports were being compiled?

Is it the case that some who you might have spoken to in Russia did so on the basis that they would not be referred to in the report, let alone named? And was that because they were terrified?

WADA noted how important it was to protect and support those who find the courage to speak out about very dark things. None of which is good enough for Abrahamson, who simply asks how Rodchenkov “finds himself now in Los Angeles? From what source or sources might he have money to, you know, pay rent and buy dinner?”

He might have asked all manner of things of Rodchenko, including how is he faring in hiding and is he relieved not to have suffered the sudden-death fate at 52 years of age of Nikita Kamaev, the former Rusada boss and his former colleague? I only ask because that, too, would be a reasonable question for an inquiring mind.

Abrahamson then picks up in this: “At page 25-6: “The compressed time frame in which to compile this Report has left much of the possible evidence unreviewed. This Report has skimmed the surface of the data that is available or could be available. As I write this Report our task is incomplete.” And concludes: “By definition, “incomplete” means exactly the opposite of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Stasi (secret police) documents emerged in the 1990s naming scores of Olympic champions and world record holders had been doped

Er, no, it doesn’t. It could mean, for example, here’s the tip and it is 10-storeys high; we believe that may indicate a colossal edifice below the surface. The 10 storeys in view are no less significant for all that, of course.

Same point when it comes to the FSB, the Russian security service. A “glimpse” does not make for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, writes Abrahamsson, with some certainty where none appears to exist, that being the nature of secret services…

Abrahamson concludes that you could “drive a truck through the report” and then writes: “See you there, Russian delegation. Behind your red, white and blue Russian flag.”

That thinly veiled appeal to patriotism and pride at a time when heads should be hung in shame is the worst of it.

The Evidence Is Out There: In Abundance

State-run and pre-meditated is what it looks like from the great body of evidence put together by the media doing sterling investigative work and from the investigators following through.

And what it sounds like is the ghost of the GDR coming back to haunt with a whisper no less chilling for its lack of surprise: “Told you so – we were not the only ones…”

None of which is good enough for Abrahamson and others who live down the lane from Surley Shirley but seem to have forgotten that she exists.

Here is what Abrahamson writes:

“But — and this is the key — the report does not tie specific athletes to specific misconduct. At least yet. Without that, it fails law, ethics, morality and common sense to bar anyone from Rio.”

Fails law? Where is the law that protects clean athletes, Alan, and if you can find it, do you think its done a good job? Morality? What is moral about returning doped athletes like Gatlin, Lovtsova and more to the Olympic arena only to send a message to the youth of the world that screams “it’s ok to cheat and even cheat again”? Common sense? Where is the common sense in teaching our children that the Olympics is a place where cheats prosper and even if they get caught, they’re good for at least two more chances? Where is the common sense in teaching our children that they should never question anything that can’t be proven?

The questions run and run and there are valid points on both sides of the coin but almost all of those posed by Abrahamsson in his editorial seem to run one way to a cul-de-sac conclusion: Russia should remain because there are other cheats in the world and in the absence of a positive test you have to assume innocence and so on and so forth.

You can almost hear an Olympic clerk somewhere whispering ‘sure, there’s the issue of state involvement but hey, can that really be proven and anyway, there’s the official word to consider; I mean shouldn’t we take the politicians’ word for it. Thing is, we accepted the word of Lothar Kipke and Co and FINA even gave them awards for services to sport, prizes that they keep to this day years beyond being criminally convicted – so how can we jump tracks now? Far safer to stick to the law, blame it all on CAS and let bygones be bygones’.

Abrahamson tweeted:

“What we have are (very serious) allegations. But: No cross-examination. No due process.”

The Stepanovs

Whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova with coach Vladimir Mokhnev who is alleged to have run a doping program

Beyond that being wrong it is deeply insulting to the teams at ARD, the New York Times, the whistelblowers who showed the courage, the investigators who followed up and the men and women who worked on hundreds and hundreds of hours of evidence and had to cope with folk pouring 8,000 samples down a sink, evading, telling fibs and seeking any obfuscation possible to cover up their old clothes with new ones.

More significantly, it takes us back to the start and point of this article: a blind eye is being turned to history. Take the tweeted words and timewarp them back to 1973, to 1976, to 1980, to 1986, to 1988, to 1989, to 1990 through to 1999. Guess what? GDR doping, serious allegations, no cross-examination, no due process.

Guess what? It was all true. And when due process happened it happened only because the state of a reunified Germany pressed the matter to a degree and went after some Mr Bigs (far too many got away by virtue of living outside Germany by that time, coaching folk from other countires and back in the Olympic realm).

What did the people running the Olympics and worlds such as FINA do? Nothing. They did absolutely nothing of any consequence whatsoever; no moves made, no words spoken with a mind to reconciliation and healing deep wounds. Not even after the guilty were criminalised. They let the sleeping dog snooze on. They refused to drive a stake though its heart. Hark the snarl of a waking beast.

In his editorial, Abrahamson says “The Olympics, at the core, are about fair play”.

Dear Alan, If only that were the case. You argue yourself for Russia to remain because you can’t chuck ’em out in a world stacked with cheats from elsewhere. All too easy, then, to drive a truck through such platitude. Core is truth. Fair Play has far too often been left gasping for air at the edge of Olympic truth – and we all know it.

The fact is that the IOC and FINA and others failed in a monumental and miserable fashion to deal with the ghosts of the GDR past and lawyers and apologists have made their case and been listened too. And all of that has heaped pain upon pain for the victims of state-sponsored doping – on both sides of the divide – and made it far easier for people to take up cheating and consider it ‘normal’ and even ‘acceptable’.

When Abrahamson writes that ” … calls for bans or more sparked by the McLaren report amount to howling from the mob. Not justice. The Olympics are better than that. The Olympics, at the core, are about fair play” he could not be more wrong.

Shirley Babashoff, Kornelia Ender and Enith Brigitha, 1976

Tell that, Alan, to Margaret (Margie) Kelly (who, you ask? look her up – she might have been an Olympic champion but for the GDR and, dare I say it, Russian drugs – in one of the races she might have medalled in, the podium was URS three times, then came three from the GDR, then Kelly and her teammate Debbie Rudd); tell it to generations of European women who were beaten into submission by the GDR for the best part of 20 years; tell it, too, to the USA women’s team of 1976, tell it to Shirley Babashoff: you’ll know her. She hails from your neck of the woods. Would have gone down as one of the greatest swimmers and athletes in history. She went down as Surley Shirley instead by folk who said she and those raising serious questions about the East Germans constituted the mob (and more on that when in a review of Babashoff’s terrific “Making Waves” ).

You’ll know Shirley, too, because the USA has recently celebrated the launch of The Last Gold. You might have seen it. Did you get to talk to the girls, Alan? Did you listen to what it all meant to them? Did you sense the depth of pain? Could you fathom the frustration of a life that left the rails when doping won the day?

Shirley, Alan, was not surley nor was she the mob. She had no evidence; there were no positive tests to turn to; what she had were deep voices and male-like muscles thrashing about the other side of the lane line. What she had was a deep feeling for her sport and its possibilities and parameters: she held nothing like ‘beyond reasonable doubt” but she was certain that something was deeply wrong – and unjust.

GDR, state plan 14:25: abuse victims on both sides – yet a call for reconciliation has fallen on deaf ears

Nothing was “beyond reasonable doubt”, either, for young Rica Reinisch, winner of three Olympic golds, Alan. The certainty that then did come her way must have been a shocker for a young teenage girl. Imagine being told at 16 that your ovaries are dangerously inflamed and that sterility is a serious threat. Take the thought and place yourself in the suit of the 14-year-old Russian who tested positive for doping in swimming … and the 15-year-old and the two 16 and 17-year-olds… and… I think you get my drift.

Russia excels not in senior swimming so much as in junior swimming, the perks and prizes on the lucrative side in the context of local economies and the pressure to perform intense. In junior swimming, Russia has thumped well above the weight of what follows in senior waters, in fact.

In the midst of that story is what amounts to abuse. That’s what I call it when 14-year-olds test positive for banned substances supplied to them by a team doctor and/or coach. Worse still when the kid goes down and those in the shadows either walk away or, woe upon woe, remain and work on with the same athlete beyond the warning or suspension.

It is against that backdrop and the one in the archive at the foot of this editorial that I feel it reasonable to question some of Abrahamson’s choice of words.

From the Horse’s Mouth

Yuri Gordeev – ARD found him wanting when it came to clean sport

Abrahamson, a member of the IOC Media Commission, accepts without question the words of Olivier Niggli, the new WADA director general, …

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