Exclusive: Australian swimming’s dark secrets around treatment of female athletes laid bare in scathing independent review

The full and shocking details of the review into the experiences of females in swimming can be revealed, with athletes subjected to physical and mental abuse and humiliating body shaming.

The dark secrets of Australian swimming’s sordid treatment of female athletes and coaches has been laid bare in the scathing independent review into the toxic culture of the sport.

The report, delivered in December 2021 just months after the swim team basked in the glow of their most successful Olympic Games in Tokyo, revealed women were subjected to physical and mental abuse, groping, disgusting sexual innuendo, body shaming and public humiliation.

“Your body looks like a sausage roll,” one athlete was told by her coach.

Another swimmer was told: “With an arse like that, you’ll never be a champion.”

The culture was so bad one elite swimmer wishes she never took up the sport.

“Taking up swimming was the worst decision my parents ever made (for me), and my life has been destroyed as a result of it.”

Parents, too, told investigators they now lament getting their kids involved in the sport.

“She realised her dreams of becoming an Olympian, but I think I ruined her life.”

For the first time the full and shocking details of the six month investigation that Swimming Australia has refused to fully release to the public can finally be revealed.

The harrowing 114-page review into the experiences of women and girls in Australian swimming, titled “Beneath the Surface: The experiences of women and girls in swimming”, by investigators Chris Ronalds, Katherine Bates and professor Alex Parker heard from 158 participants, including former and current athletes, parents, coaches, technical officials, volunteers and administrators.

Some of the testimony they heard was so shocking that the sport’s authorities ordered all the documents to be destroyed so the Australian public never heard how deep the problems really are.

Swimming Australia has steadfastly refused to release the full report, despite being urged by the panellists to come clean and share all their dirty secrets.

However, this masthead has been shown a leaked copy of the explosive report, which reveals how the investigators had already protected the identities of all the informants who came forward.

None have been identified, which raises uncomfortable questions about why Swimming Australia refused to release the findings.

In a statement to this masthead, Swimming Australia said: “We cannot release the full report due to the confidentiality guaranteed to participants, the themes of the report are clear in the recommendations and provide public accountability for our steps forward.

“The Board had considered public release of the full report, however, decided against release due to the significant risk to the confidentiality, and potentially mental health, of those people who had provided input to the panel.”

Critics of Swimming Australia’s previous approach to dealing with abuse cases would no doubt argue the answer is likely to be that the report paints a deeply disturbing picture of the country’s most successful and highest-funded Olympic sport.

The report, which details sickening claims of abuse, is far worse than the summary provided by Swimming Australia because it includes traumatic statements from survivors.

Although no criminal charges resulted from the investigations, the list of findings from the report is chilling because it is so long and so confronting.

Yet, it is still only a snapshot of how serious the problems in swimming really are because the scope of this review was limited to a five-year-window, from 2016-21.

The report into the treatment of women and girls in swimming.

WHAT THE SECRET REPORT CONTAINED

BODY SHAMING AND PUBLIC HUMILIATION

The investigators heard multiple reports of how skinfold tests and weigh-ins were used to body shame and publicly humiliate young female competitors, leading to eating disorders, self harm and athletes quitting the sport.

“I wasn’t naturally a thin girl and I starved myself because the coach told me my body would ‘look more palatable’ to selectors.”

Others were told:

“With an arse like that, you’ll never be a champion.”

“Your body looks like a sausage roll.”

“What am I going to do with your big f***ing hips.”

“You’re fat and that is why you are slow.”

“Lay off the dessert.”

Some swimmers told how they were weighed in front of their teammates, or had to call out their weights in team meetings so they could be recorded on a public notice board.

Any swimmers who were deemed to tip the scales too highly, would be ordered to run around the pool in front of all their teammates as a form of punishment. Others spoke of being labelled with highly derogatory terms.

“This put me in a tailspin where I started to starve myself to meet my coach’s expectations which impacted me at school, friendship groups, home life and training.”

“[My coach] would make me get out of the pool and run laps of the pool to try to lose this weight. And I’m like running around the (the pool) crying.”

Several parents told the investigators of how their kids developed eating disorders after being told they were “fat”.

Some swimmers explained how they would make themselves vomit after eating meals, while ingesting laxatives to keep their weight down.

Others said they were told their boobs were too big.

One swimmer reported that if her coach found out what she had eaten, he’d “kill her”.

“My teammates and I used to purge after meals.

“We’d sneak pizza to our room, then use the toothbrush to make ourselves vomit.”

The investigators did not hear one single positive report about any nutritionists. Every comment about nutritionists was considered negative, yet no action appears to have been taken.

SWIMMER-COACH RELATIONSHIP

An entire section of the report was devoted to the relationship between coaches and athletes.

In many cases it was likened to a parent-child relationship, where the coach is very much the dominating, controlling figure.

The real parents of many swimmers revealed how they had to place enormous trust in the coaches of their children – sometimes with disastrous results.

“I handed my child over to the coach and I will always regret that and wonder how I let this happen to my daughter. I should have spoken up, but instead I trusted the coach would help her realise her dreams. When she complained about her treatment, I told her, ‘This is the best thing for your swimming’. I now watch her in and out of therapy, battling an eating disorder, and even though she realised her dreams of being an Olympian, I think I ruined her life.”

One athlete said:

“Taking up swimming was the worst decision my parents ever made (for me), and my life has been destroyed as a result of it.”

Another parent told the investigators: “The coaching relationship doesn’t seem healthy. She is infatuated by (her coach) and whatever he says she will just believe. Everything was based around him and pleasing him. It is commonly spoken among the team about how off it seemed. It looks like dangerous territory to her.”

At a national team camp, one coach was reported to “always answer the door in his towel”, which made female swimmers and staff uncomfortable.

Other swimmers expressed fears about speaking up, claiming that if they did they were derided as weak or mentally ill.

One swimmer who did lodge a complaint against a coach was told she was the one who needed to change her behaviour.

Others complained how some domineering coaches would control every aspect of their female swimmer’s lives, from what they eat, to how they cut their hair, to the clothes they wear, even to what they post on their social media accounts.

“We were groomed to accept bullying as part of the culture.”

Some teenagers testified that they saw coaches graphically sexting their mistress or overheard them discussing their sexual conquests or referring to attractive female parents as “yummy mummies”.

Others complained how they were humiliated at mealtimes, or called “spastics” or “retards”.

There were also numerous concerns submitted about coaches touching the bathers of swimmers, or constantly putting their arms around them, or standing directly behind them on the blocks when they were bent over ready to dive in the pool.

One swimmer said: “Your successes are theirs (the coaches) but the failures you have to bear alone – it is 100 per cent your fault.”

LACK OF FEMALE COACHES

Although roughly half the competitors in the Australian team are female, Australia rarely, if ever selects female coaches for the national team.

At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, females won eight of Australia’s nine gold medals in swimming, but there was not a single female coach on the Dolphins squad.

Despite being warned for years to move with the times, participants reported feeling “sad”, “dismayed”, “confused”, “incredulous”, “disappointed” and “outraged” when the Tokyo 2021 coaching team was announced.

A female coach said: “I don’t see how they can justify not taking a single woman. We have several coaches who are of that standard, but they get overlooked because it’s just a big boys’ club”.

A swimmer said seeing an old and all male coaching staff selected for the Tokyo Olympics made her “blood boil”.

A senior Swimming Australia staff member said no female coaches had met the criteria for selection. Another said athletes don’t want to be coached by women, a notion that was strongly refuted by competitors.

WOMEN’S HEALTH ISSUES

“Often male coaches don’t want to discuss (menstrual) periods and would not want to understand the symptoms and discomfort that comes with periods.

“I have heard so many stories where coaches have just told girls to “suck it up” and “it’s not that bad”.

TOXIC MASCULINITY

Some female coaches also reported having their best athletes poached, hampering their chances of being picked on national teams.

“There is definitely a culture of male coaches protecting each other’s backs when it comes to unbecoming conduct, particularly when on Australian teams,” one female coach said.

The report heard submissions how male swimmers behave differently when there are only male coaches around.

“Male dominated environment on pool deck led to the rise of inappropriate behaviour from male squad mates, as inappropriate behaviour from male coaches was role-modelled to the male athletes. This led to female swimmers feeling as though they were vulnerable and felt unsafe to speak up about the behaviours.”

TOUCHED INAPPROPRIATELY

Young teenage swimmers told the investigators how they were groped under the water by male training partners but did not feel comfortable reporting it to male coaches or discussing it with anyone else so tolerated it in silence.

“With few female coaches around, the male coaches get very egotistical which starts the toxic boys club and has a hugely negative impact.

“Friendly banter between males sees them speaking of their balls and their dicks and the processes their bodies produce which is daunting because it is being spoken of in a sexual manner. Male swimmers will cast slurs about the body shapes of female coaches and swimmers.”

Female coaches are often told they are “not tough enough”.

Some reported that they felt disrespected “like a piece of meat”.

One female coach reported how she had to share a bedroom with a male colleague on a team trip after she had requested a separate room.

Another person submitted a report of how a senior male coach took the underwear from the suitcase of an unsuspecting female coach and displayed it in a common area where young athletes could see the garments.

SKINFOLD TESTS

The report took a dim view of the now banned practice of skinfold tests, which is an archaic way of measuring how much body fat a person has.

While there is no scientific evidence supporting the notion that only very slim body shapes can succeed at swimming, skinfold tests were commonly used even though athletes found them degrading.

“Psychologically it puts a lot of stress on young women to force their bodies to look a certain way at a time where you really don’t get a say in what is and isn’t going to develop, and it’s pretty f***ed.

“Because I look in the mirror and think that I was fat because that’s the message that I’ve gotten from a particular conversation with (my coach) who had so much authority over me.”

GOVERNANCE ISSUES

The report highlighted a range of concerns about the structures and system of the sport, but that was just dipping the toe in the water.

The lack of any non-aligned, independent board members means that there are obvious conflicts of interest that arise with many Board decisions which promote or maintain individual state or territory interests over national interests.

The power of the Board is seen by many as acting primarily or principally to protect and promote the interests of these coaches over the real interests and issues of swimmers. The focus is perceived to be on outcomes, principally medals, and the prestige that goes with the coach who trains the medal winner rather than the actual medal winner.

The federated model of swimming was criticised by many participants in the inquiry as being unwieldy, inflexible and subject to the real power and control of ASCTA and some states either together or separately.

Some of the board’s policies, such as the one covering conflict of interest, are just cut and pasted from other sports, complete with spelling mistakes.

“There is also poor grammar in the document such as ‘directors should absence [sic] him/herself’. Such a lack of attention to detail in an important governance document raises substantial concerns about the level of attention and concern by Board members to critical governance issues.”

SWIMMER AGREEMENTS

The report highlighted the imbalance of power between swimmers and their national body.

When swimmers first make the national team, they are handed a document and told to sign it immediately. The structure of the agreement is mainly to the benefit of Swimming Australia as the party with the most commercial influence and power.

“They give us the athlete agreement either on the night of making a team, or on an orientation day, and asked to sign and hand back immediately. We don’t have a chance to read it and we don’t take it home with us, we have to hand the whole document back and to be honest I have no idea what I am signing. I would be surprised if many of the swimmers know what’s in the agreement.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS

“The Panel saw some examples where swimmers were dealt with for a breach of policies such as those relating to social media in a heavy handed manner when compared with similar or more egregious breaches by coaches or support staff. Relatively minor breaches were vigorously pursued by Swimming Australia when a less onerous process and penalty would have dealt with the situation and achieved a more equal result for the swimmer.”

THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF UNDERFUNDING

The government funding model means swimmers can lose their funding without any right of appeal based on performance results, and can be sent home from the Australian Institute of Sport facility in Canberra on short notice and may have no living arrangements which are readily accessible in their hometown.

“This can be compounded when the reason for the funding withdrawal is a serious medical condition which requires immediate and ongoing treatment. None of these issues are explored with the athlete prior to the termination of their grant.”

BROADER PROBLEMS

Any swimmers or staff that were gay were told to hide their sexuality.

The report found that most participants who are subjected to any form of abuse, gave up rather than complain because they did not trust the governing body.

Informants said Swimming Australia had a culture which routinely “values performance over wellbeing” and “isn’t a safe space”.

They described feeling “absolutely disgusted”, “let down” and “abandoned” at the lack of support shown to them by Swimming Australia after personal disclosures regarding physical and mental health challenges.

The independent panellists made 46 separate recommendations, which Swimming Australia promoted to implement before the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Currently 38 of the recommendations are listed as already being “complete”, including recommendation #46 – for the full report to be publicly released, which has never happened – until now.

Originally published as Exclusive: Australian swimming’s dark secrets around treatment of female athletes laid bare in scathing independent review