Sun Yang guilty verdict: FINA the real villain in doping controversy
In many ways controversial Chinese swimmer Sun Yang - who rightly received an eight-year ban for breaking anti-doping rules - played the pantomime villain for the real culprits, writes JULIAN LINDEN.
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The stunning and deserved banning of Sun Yang is a rare knockout victory to be celebrated by everyone who believes in the fight for clean sport but it’s not the end of the struggle.
The denialists who have been defending Sun and the system that initially let him off the hook should hang their hands in shame for their cheap shot attacks on Mack Horton and all the other brave swimmers who dared to stand up for the beliefs.
For at least half a century – when East Germans were cheating their way to gold – swimmers have been pleading for a fair go because the sport they love has been riddled with dopers, but they need help because they can’t win the battle alone.
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Their cries have been ignored by the officials and federations that have been too busy filling their own pockets to stop and listen to the athletes who shed their blood, sweat and tears.
Finally, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has listened and made the absolute right decision to kick Sun out of sport but the disgraced Chinese freestyler was never the real source of frustration for the generations of swimmers fed up with the shoddy way their sport is run.
Sun’s reputation (outside of China) is in tatters, and he’s now cast alongside Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones as one of sport’s most notorious dopers but he shouldn’t be made the lone scapegoat for the real culprits – swimming’s world governing body FINA.
As Horton, Ian Thorpe, Cate Campbell, Michael Phelps and countless other legends of the sport have stated, swimming will never be clean until FINA changes.
Although FINA makes hundreds of millions of dollars from its star athletes, only a fraction ever goes back to the competitors, whose requests are almost always rejected by one of the most autocratic sporting organisations on the planet.
There are of course plenty of people within FINA who have the best interests of swimmers at heart but this is not your average sporting body.
Board member Tamas Gyarfas of Hungary has been charged for ordering the murder of media tycoon Janos Fenyo in the 1990s.
Ben Ekumbo, the former head of the Kenyan swimming federation, remains on charges of sexual molestation of minors.
The former head of Brazilian swimming Coaracy Nunes, a former FINA board member, was arrested for embezzling millions of dollars of public funds.
And Husain Al Musallam, who is almost certain to be appointed the next FINA president, has been named as a possible co-conspirator in the FBI’s investigation into the FIFA scandal after he allegedly bribed an Asian soccer official.
This is why swimmers find it so hard to win and why Sun’s ban could be a game changer.
Sun was a favourite son of FINA’s top brass because of the huge money he brought in so the accusation was that he was always afforded favourable treatment while officials turned a blind eye to his lewd behaviour.
Now, he’s gone, but the sport’s rulers remain so the fight goes on.