At Last: Shirley Babashoff To Be Honoured By American Swimming Coaches Association

Shirley Babashoff, who but for the GDR’s State Plan 14:25 doping program would have been hailed one of the greatest freestyle swimmers in history, is to be honoured by the American Swimming Coaches Association at a banquet during the World Clinic next month. Babashoff will doubtless receive a standing ovation when she rises to be introduced by coach Mark Schubert.

Babashoff’s book, Making Waves, is the SwimVortex Book of the Year: it recalls the swimmer’s career from girl to a multiple Olympic medallist soaked in silver and dubbed Surley Shirley for telling what turned out to be the truth about doping. That truth came out in the early 1990s but 27 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, neither the IOC nor FINA has found a way of honouring those thumped into submission by doping, not a single result nor record denoted with the asterisk that screams from every page of the swimming history book 1973 to 1989 and beyond.

During the Rio Olympic Games, Babashoff sent encouraging messages and tweets to the Olympic 100m breaststroke champion of 2016, Lilly King (USA) after she wagged her finger back at Yuliya Efimova*, the Russian who was barred then reinstated twice this year on the way to a Games at which she was booed every time she walked out to swim.

Efimova tested positive for the steroid DHEA in October 2013 and served a 16-month suspension. King’s protest followed that of Ruta …

continue reading in source www.swimvortex.com

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