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Cold War In The Pool: As IOC Boss Backs Lifetime Bans It’s Babashoff Vs Salnikov
- Updated: August 9, 2016
The echo from history stood out in twitterdom for the clarion call it was:
@_king_lil you are #MAKINGWAVES and we love it! Go girl- you are what the world – and ESPECIALLY what the Olympics need right now. #HONESTY – Shirley Babashoff
And here was another slice of history: FINA Bureau member and Russian swim federation boss Vladimir Salnikov, twice an Olympic 1500m freestyle champion for the Soviet Union (1980 and 1988) today said that the atmosphere surrounding his team at the Olympics reminded him of the Cold War.
He criticised American 100m breatsstroke champion Lilly King for “attacking the integrity of her Russian rival”, apparently having forgotten the 2013 positive steroid test for which Yuliya Efimova* was banned.
Efimova has been booed and jeered every time she rise to her blocks and Salnikov tells Reuters, the news agancy: “I think the whole atmosphere is very strange.”
He is out of step with history in the making, however. The message is getting through. After Michael Phelps said he was “pissed” that convicted dopers were allowed to compete, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that its president Thomas Bach backed lifetime suspensions from the Games.
As Babashoff notes how the state’s involvement in doping in Russia as reminiscent of the GDR’s State Plan 14:25 and all the pain that hurt, the wounds still open all these years on, as the book of Olympic results testifies to, Salnikov leaps the other way.
The atmosphere at the Rio Aquatics Centre reminded him of “when we had the situation with the Cold War and everything was like Russia (versus) America and a lot of people were putting oil on the flame to make it higher. This is another round, but I think we will survive it.”
In what shape, is the question. And what of the two missing EPO tests and the athletss whose names Salnikov knows, along with that of the doctor who supplied the EPO. Where are those and why were they not reported to WADA: that is another question for Salnikov.
Salnikov said King was was entitled to her opinion but noted that Efimova had legal backing of CAS.
“Does she consider the CAS decision is wrong?” he asked. Well, yes, of course she does, for that is the point: and Thomas Bach and others who now support lifetime bans agree, bans that would make Efimova not only unwelcome at the Olympics but not even a oart of them.
Salnikov (right) is not quite up to speed, saying: “She has a long road to go in sport, I hope, and I think in the end she will understand there are certain rules, there’s a procedure that regulates the participation of athletes. Of course she has the right to her opinion, but you need to be objective and you need to be honourable.”
And then came the sympathy not for the athlete defeated by another who fell foul of rules but for the rule-breaker instead: “Efimova has been through a very severe ordeal, and in an atmosphere of distrust and uncertainty I think she showed very strong character – resilience and focus – and so I think she deserved her medal. She has come through very tough times and I’m sure she will cope.”
How to shift that cultural stance, ask critics of the softness that such attitudes imply? How to rid Russia of its problems if those in charge do not stand by the IOC’s and FINA’s mantra of zero-tolerant? How to change things when it is a FINA member who …
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