FINA takes action against East German cheats bringing Olympic justice within sight

One of the key architects of East Germany’s notorious Olympic doping program has been stripped of his honours, next step is to do the same to his athletes.

The Australian swimmers who were cheated out of their medals by drug-assisted East German rivals are one giant step closer to finally getting their rightful awards.

In a major development overnight that proves swimming’s world governing body is getting serious about righting the wrongs of the past, FINA has taken long-overdue action against one of the architects of East Germany’s notorious doping system.

Dr Lothar Lipke – who administered steroids to underage East German female swimmers in the 1970s and 1980s – has finally been stripped of one of FINA’s highest honours.

The disgraced physician was added to FINA’s honours list during the mid 1980s, in recognition of his service to FINA’s medical commission.

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Michelle Ford of Australia celebrates winning gold in the Womens 800m Freestyle during the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Picture: Tony Duffy/Getty Images)

But he should have been stripped of his award in 2000 when he was convicted in a Berlin court of 58 counts of causing bodily harm after giving steroids to young girls without their knowledge.

Many of the female swimmers later suffered side effects from the drugs they were given, including birth defects in their children.

Disgracefully, FINA let him keep his honour.

But now under new leadership – and promising to introduce serious reforms after decades of appalling behaviour – FINA has finally done the right thing and removed Lipke from its honour list, effective immediately.

“There is no place for doping in aquatics and certainly no place for individuals who have been found guilty of causing great damage to our sport, and cheating clean athletes of a fair chance,” FINA President Husain Al Musallam said in a statement.

“For a doctor to harm athletes in the search for medals is unacceptable and I am proud that FINA has decided to send a clear message.”

Former East German swimmers Christine Knacke-Sommer (L) & Birgit Matz testified during the trial of former sports officials charged with feeding anabolic steroids to athletes.

Elected on a platform to rebuild FINA’s scandalous reputation by starting from scratch, Al Musallam has also promised to look into the possibility of retrospectively awarding medals to clean swimmers who were robbed because of East Germany’s drug-fuelled political ideology during the Cold War.

Only the International Olympic Committee (IOC) can redistribute Olympic medals, but FINA has already taken the matter up and highly-placed insiders have told News Corp the IOC is more open than ever to the possibility, after previously insisting it was too late.

“Athletes work their entire lives for a mere chance to compete for a medal, yet alone win one,” Al Musallam said.

“So when athletes are denied the reward they worked so hard to achieve, FINA must do everything it can to right this wrong.”

If the IOC agrees to do the right thing, at least nine Australian swimmers stand to be given new Olympic medals.

These include Michelle Ford, who won a single gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics but should have won three, elevating her among the all-time greats.

Michelle Ford-Eriksson Australian swimming champion and gold medallist

In an exclusive column with News Corp last month, Ford, now Ford-Eriksson, gave a heartbreaking explanation about why he athletes who missed out deserved justice, writing: “It is time to right the wrongs and give those who have been denied their rightful place the recognition they deserve and their place in history.”

The other Aussie swimmers in line for an Olympic rewrite are Lisa Curry, Rosemary Milgate, Janelle Elford, Julie McDonald, Nicole Livingstone, Lara Hooiveld, Fiona Allesandri and Karen van Wirdum, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If FINA is successful it will also pile the pressure on other world sports, especially athletics, to follow suit, which would mean sprint queen Raelene Boyle – famously robbed of two gold medals in the 100m and 200m finals at the 1972 Munich Olympics – would finally get her recognition.

There is no question the East Germans cheated so it’s own stubborn officials who are preventing justice from being done.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, irrefutable proof of the drug programs was discovered through the opening of secret police files.

Those files not only contained all the names of the athletes who were doped but even detailed the exact amounts of performance-enhancing drugs they were given.

Shamefully, Olympic sporting officials have done nothing about it all these years later, claiming it is all too hard and too late because the statute of limitations had passed.

That’s the biggest cop out in the Olympics. As the stripping of Dr Lipke’s honour proves, it’s never too late.

DISTURBING PROOF SWIMMING AUSTRALIA IS ROTTEN

By: Jessica Halloran

It shows you something is quite rotten about Australian swimming when yet another decorated Olympian comes forward to speak about the body shaming they’ve been put through.

On the weekend Olympic gold medallist Cate Campbell revealed a hectic, self-loathing spiral she went into over the calorie count of full-cream milk. She told of the disordered eating that almost broke her body and caused her to withdraw from the Commonwealth Games 12 years ago in Delhi.

It again raises questions around the foundations on which Australian swim coaching has been built, which is this firm belief that “thinner is faster”. And if this philosophy has had such damaging results, then who is stopping coaches from employing them today?

Some of our biggest names have not escaped unscathed. Leisel Jones was eating just a “single red apple” for lunch and soup for dinner in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after she was told by a gym coach that “you just might swim faster if you were lighter”.

“I’ve got it into my head that I am too fat and if I can just lose more weight I will win the 100-metre event for sure,” Jones writes in her book Body Lengths.

Cate Campbell in the Womens 50m Freestyle semi-final. Picture: Alex Coppel. Picture: Alex Coppel.

For Emily Seebohm, she told The Australian how her life descended into a cycle of bingeing, purging and laxatives all after a Swimming Australia’s official quip a few years ago that losing weight would make her “faster”. This year triple Olympic gold medallist Libby Trickett said she too had been “body shamed” during her career.

Campbell revealed it was at the Beijing Olympics that all “the girls” on the team – which included Seebohm, Trickett and Jones – were told to use smaller plates at dinner so they wouldn’t overeat. Campbell also details the weekly weigh-ins and the public admonishments that occurs at other swimming squads.

“The general consensus from most other male coaches was: the skinnier the better,” Campbell writes in her book Sister Secrets alongside her sister Bronte. Campbell would later ditch the scales. “I still advocate that we should not be measuring our health by numbers – not calories, not kilograms, not skin-fold measurements, not clothing sizes. Instead I focused on what I was able to achieve.”

Swimmers are told thinner is faster

Of those in charge at the Beijing Olympics – many remain coaching today – and these practices remain part and parcel of the sport. What evidence is this based on? Not much.

Ian Thorpe says he swam “well” at both 105 kilograms and at 90 kilograms. During his career he pointed out the damaging fixation on weight by some swimming coaches.

“The vast majority of coaches are lecturing about diet and they are obese…,” Thorpe told Australian Story in 2007. “When you get in the pool it’s like being 10 per cent of your body weight, that one or two kilograms that coaches have stressed over in the past, really equate to 100 to 200 grams in the water.”

His then coach Tracey Menzies – one of only two Australian females to ever coach at an elite level – on Australian Story in 2007 spoke to a deeper issue plaguing the sport that arguably remains today.

“There’s coaches that will still have those dogmatic approaches; that they own that athlete, they own their eating rights, they own their training rights and they own even their thinking. They are dictators,” Menzies told the program. “I don’t see it as a successful way of coaching.”

Menzies, who coached Thorpe to gold in 2004, was lost to the sport of swimming last year. She now works in gymnastics – most say is a testament to the unwelcoming culture for women in the sport.

The Australian has also spoken to swimmers who speak candidly about senior squad members teaching them how to vomit in the toilets at the pool to keep their skin folds down. Of coaches telling them it’s good to “not to get their period”, the shame felt around public-weighing. There was the swimmer who said that she was put on a “keto diet” at age 12 – by an Olympic coach.

During his career Ian Thorpe pointed out the damaging fixation on weight by some swimming coaches.

There is currently a review into the sport and its handling of women and girl swimmers. But men, like decorated former Olympian Daniel Kowalski, have suffered too. He told Yahoo! Sport about a shocking time after the 1996 Games. “I started to develop a lot of issues with my body image and how I viewed myself. I became extremely bulimic, would binge eat and purge and there were a lot of dark times where I felt it would be a lot easier to not be around,” Kowalski said.

“I thought long and hard about ‘how do I end my life’.”

But as we have seen from his experience, as well as Campbell’s, Jones’, Trickett and Seebohm’s admissions, disordered eating and practices are far too ingrained in this culture. What will Swimming Australia do about this? Hopefully the review will toss up some answers.

Until then what remains true is many of these coaches, who have overseen these practices, remain on deck guiding our future Olympic stars.

Originally published as FINA takes action against East German cheats bringing Olympic justice within sight