Olympic boss welcomes rebel swimming league, issues doping reminder

While Thomas Bach welcomes swimming’s new rebel professional league, the IOC President reminded organisers they have a duty to maintain the integrity of the sport.

Cate Campbell led the charge for reform. Picture: Getty

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Olympic supremo Thomas Bach has given his seal of approval to the proposed rebel professional league that has forced swimming’s notoriously heavy-handed world governing body into long overdue reforms.

While FINA is furious that the breakaway International Swimming League is challenging its iron-fisted control of the sport, the IOC president believes competition is not only normal but ultimately good for everyone.

“FINA is not the only international federation where you see commercial organisers offering competitions to athletes,” Bach said. “You don't even think about this anymore.

“Look at tennis, look at cycling, look at football, look at many other sports where they have this kind of system.”

Cate Campbell led the charge for reform. Picture: Getty

Bach, who will meet face-to-face with FINA’s leaders at this week’s SportAccord in Queensland, said it was clear that swimmers were already benefiting from the stoush between FINA and ISL.

Not only will swimmers finally get the chance to earn a decent salary by competing in ISL’s $7.5 million proposed global team event, but FINA has also been shamed into softening its strongman treatment of athletes.

Faced with a class-action lawsuit from disgruntled competitors, FINA withdrew its outrageous threat to ban swimmers from competing at next year’s Tokyo Olympics if they signed for ISL.

Then, FINA responded by announcing a new $5.5 million series of its own, opening its purse strings in a rare peace offering to swimmers who have long been asking for greater transparency about the millions spent each year on “FINA Family Expenses.”

“FINA has addressed this issue now by changing their regulations,” Bach said.

Convicted doper Yang Sun. Picture: Getty

“They are giving the athletes (permission) to participate also in other competitions (ISL), and at the same time they are beefing up their own competition.”

Bach also reminded the rebel organisers they have a duty to maintain the integrity of the sport, ensuring that proper controls were in place to combat doping, yet another key area that FINA hasn’t exactly excelled in, turning a blind eye to the East Germans in 1970s and 1980s and facing questions about its handling of some high profile Chinese cases.

ISL has already announced that not only will it use officially sanctioned doping controls but unlike FINA it has automatically banned any swimmers who have previously failed drug tests.

While Sun Yang is expected to pocket $90,000 from competing in the FINA series, he won’t earn a cent from ISL because he served a doping ban 2014.

He somehow escaped a second suspension after a FINA doping panel cleared him of wrongdoing even after he admitted using a hammer to destroy his own blood samples that had been collected by independent testers.

But that case is not finished yet after the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.