Cameron McEvoy says Russian doping scandal won’t affect the way he prepares to compete in Rio

CAMERON McEvoy is renowned for his intelligence. He’s pondered life’s big questions, is an academic and understands string theory. But this question stopped him in his tracks.

Cameron McEvoy will go for five golds in Rio

CAMERON McEvoy pondered the question for what felt like an eternity.

The smartest man in the Australian swim team and the fastest swimmer in the world had suddenly been stopped in his tracks.

The 22-year-old Gold Coast physics student is renowned for having all the answers. He’s pondered life’s big questions, understands string theory and knows swimming is one small part of his world he calls life.

But when confronted with the biggest scandal and conundrum facing world sport just days out from the Olympics — what to do with Russia and in particular his 100m freestyle rival Vladimir Morozov who FINA has banned from competing in Rio — McEvoy is suddenly without absolute clarity.

Like most sports lovers, he is confused. Mad even.

His sport and that of the entire Olympic movement is being torn down to the very fabric of fairness and equality.

I’m in a position where I can’t have an educated opinion of what’s happening in sport right now.

Cameron McEvoy

“I haven’t even had time to reflect on it,” McEvoy said. “For me it’s not going to change anything I’m going to do in any of the races and I imagine it’s not going to change anything about any of the other competitors who are going to be there as well.

“And also, I’m in a position where I can’t have an educated opinion of what’s happening in sport right now.

“I have a personal opinion which I haven’t really sat down and thought through yet but it is quite biased because my life is the sport.

“Obviously things that come into it and interfere with it or hold the sport to less than what I see it will make me that little bit more biased.

Australian swimming sensation Cameron McEvoy is chasing five gold medals in Rio: credit Mercedes-Benz

“But I’m not in a position to have an educated opinion and I’m very much a man of making sure I know what I’m talking about before I talk about it.”

It might be because of the personal conflict McEvoy is facing. He has never been shy of an opinion on doping but just days out from the biggest sporting event of his life he is cautious about creating a headline.

In his head McEvoy has the heavily rehearsed Australian Dolphins team line reverberating around his brain. A message rolled out by the head coach all the way down to the youngest team member during their one-day media event at the pre-Olympic staging camp in Auburn that “we can’t control it so don’t worry about it”.

For most of the 37 Dolphins, the banning of seven Russian swimmers as a result of WADA’s independent McLaren report that found systemic statewide doping won’t impact them in Rio.

But for the likes of McEvoy it is a significant development.

Vladimir Morozov will not compete in Rio

He is the world No. 1 in the 100m freestyle and with Morozov banned, suddenly there is one less legitimate medal threat to his golden dreams.

“The depth of the 100 in the world right now is such that regardless, the best are still going to be there on the blocks,” McEvoy said.

“I think that’s not going to change if two people aren’t going to be there.

The depth of the 100 in the world right now is such that regardless, the best are still going to be there on the blocks

Cameron McEvoy

“He (Morozov) hasn’t done a proper race in both the 100m and 50m (freestyle) since 2013 really. I didn’t race him in 2014 and last year he had the false start (in the semi-finals at world titles) and because it’s been so long I haven’t been thinking about him at all.

“I do try to make the conscious effort not to think about anyone but it’s been so long since I raced him that he wasn’t on the radar up until recently.

“I saw his time at the Russian trials but he hasn’t raced much recently compared with what he used to do.”

But of course McEvoy is no stranger to what the swimming community is now branding the “asterisk” swimmers.

The ones who serve doping bans — usually heavily reduced from the minimum two or four years demanded by WADA because the swimming governing body are notoriously soft on drug cheats — but are now back on pool deck as if nothing happened.

Guys like China’s Sun Yang, Korea’s Park Tae Hwan and Chinese sprinter Ning Zetao who denied McEvoy the world title 12 months ago despite racing with a * next to his name.

He was banned for clenbuterol in his teens but was strangely back racing within months and, adding to pool deck conspiracy theories that typically follow the Chinese ahead of major meets — has bizarrely disappeared off the grid for a secret training camp with other China stars in Turkey.

FINA records show Zetao, and all the * swimmers, have been heavily tested this year and declared “clean”, but the suspicion remains just as it should for any athlete found to have cheated the system.

This is the problem for the Rio Olympic Games. The hornets’ nest that is the Russian sporting scandal first emerged in 2013, one year before the Sochi Winter Olympics where cheating was at its most rampant, but nobody bothered to act upon the revelations.

Now it’s too late. The Rio Olympics are themselves an asterisk, consigned to history as either the Olympics where clean Russian athletes were denied the chance to race or dirty Soviet cheats once again bucked the system and stole medals from legitimate athletes.

The fear, as always is the case when suspicion hovers like a dark cloud refusing to blow away, is that the Olympics will be ruined by what has now become a political battle.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has condemned the banning of his athletes as an attack on his country and his political clout is having influence in sports such as judo where as the sport’s patron not one Russian athlete has been banned from Rio.

The entire Russian athletics team has been banned from racing while other sports like swimming, weightlifting, rowing, sailing and kayaking have denied entries to at least 37 athletes that were named in the McLaren report taking the total tally to 105 athletes kicked out of the Games.

Some are banned because they have previous doping infractions, others because they were one of the 643 positive tests never officially recorded.

It’s being a blessing for Australia as not only are the women’s eight rowing crew suddenly getting a start in Rio when they thought they’d missed the Olympic qualification, medals are suddenly up for grabs.

For Gold Coast kayakers Daniel Bowker and Jordan Wood, the expulsion of K2 200m defending champion Alexander Dyachencko and Yury Postrigay has blown their event wide open.

Australia finished sixth in this event in London four years ago and while this Gold Coast pair are not expected to be among the medal contenders, anything can happen now the field is without it’s strongest crew.

McEvoy’s 4x100m freestyle relay teammates — Somerset sprinter James Roberts and Kingscliff veteran Matt Abood — also have reason to smile as not only is Morozov gone, so too is their third best sprinter Nikita Lobintsev from the team that won last year’s silver medal at the world titles.

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Australia now jumps to No. 2 on the seedings behind France and a relay gold medal is most certainly within reach — even if Abood is refusing to acknowledge the impact on the Dolphins’ prospects.

“It will be minimal. There is still four or five other teams that can make it happen on the night,” he said.

“So whether it’s them or anyone else, it doesn’t make the times any easier.

“It’s disappointing (it’s happened), it’s a distraction. It’s just another thing to add into the Olympic mix I think and my opinion doesn’t really matter, but it’s not something I’ve done a whole lot of reading into or something I’m paying a lot of attention to because at the end of the day it doesn’t help me.”

As much as Aussies could now do better in Rio, the impact of Russia’s absence will be felt and it’s why Australians are privately furious.

Next week’s Olympic Games is supposed to highlight all that is great about athletic achievement yet the focus is on those who take short cuts. Clean athletes are forced to front questions about the cheats. It’s the cheats who deserve the cross examination.

“Russia to be really honest … has been a distraction,” Australian swimming high performance manager Wayne Lomas said.

“We are disappointed whenever a story starts to move away from our own performances and when the disruptions are other than what we can control.

“We can’t control what’s happening in Russia, we can’t control what the IOC or other bodies have done with that.

“Clearly we’re disappointed.”

Originally published as Cameron McEvoy says Russian doping scandal won’t affect the way he prepares to compete in Rio