The stench of swimming’s pigsty

Swimmer Maddie Groves deserves a medal for the stand she has taken

Cowardly coaches who fawn over superstars while humiliating and traumatising the battlers. A governing body that sounds as careless and clueless as Cricket Australia during the Cape Town Test. Swimming Australia is heading to the Tokyo Olympics with the stench of a sporting pigsty. It has some explaining to do. Oink, oink.

The good news? It’s all in the pool. Emma McKeon. Ariarne Titmus. Cate Campbell. Kyle Chalmers. Tremendous athletes you probably haven’t seen at the Olympic trials because SA pulled off the rather remarkable feat of failing to secure free-to-air television coverage for them. The bad news? Revelations of a coaching culture not much different from when boofheaded SA mentors would get strippers to their annual conference. What a sickening thought, all those pervy blokes leering at strippers by night then working with young women dressed in nothing but their swimming togs. From lap dances to the lap pool. It’s creepy. An “oink, oink” here, an “oink, oink” there, someone needs a breast reduction, someone else is a “lard arse.” The cruel and juvenile code of “six-one-twenty,” representing the letters that label a young swimmer “fat”. All a bit cruel, pervy and gross.

More power to Dr Jenny McMahon, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist turned university researcher who’s extraordinarily extensive research has lifted the lid on SA’s cringe-worthy culture.

Jenny McMahon.

And more power to Maddie Groves, the Rio Olympics silver medallist who’s brave enough to go after the “mysoginistic perverts” still creeping around. SA’s initial reaction to Groves reminded me of the Australian Government’s initial responses to Brittany Higgins. Do nothing and hope she’ll go away. Question her motives. In Groves’s case, highlight the medical issues behind her withdrawal from the Olympic trials. Cast doubt on the victim, in other words. Accuse her of not providing enough details, or of being uncontactable, or in a poor state of mind, or all of the above.

Groves has agreed to meet with SA president Kieren Perkins and CEO Alex Baumann. For all those who have been oinked at, or been called “a lard arse,” or “a f … ing idiot”, or told to have a breast reduction, or been subjected to the moronic “six-one-twenty,” or fat-shamed, Groves is a hero. She’s been inundated with support and may the widespread encouragement steel her resolve. She has something incredibly powerful at her disposal. A voice that can pull the swine into line.

The parallels between SA right now and Cricket Australia in Cape Town are numerous. The belief it will all blow over. The gobbledook and gibberish PR statements. The win-at-all costs mantra that brought CA to its knees is shared by SA, highlighted by the selection policy in which meeting an Olympic qualification time is generally not enough to get a swimmer to Tokyo. The time also needs to have been good enough to reach the final of the 2019 world championships.

Australia head coach Rohan Taylor said of the selection policy: “We’re employed and held accountable for the performances at the international meets through medals. Our funding is all driven by those things so we have to put in place a system to try to maximise that opportunity.”

Only medals matter. If you’re a chance for gold at Tokyo, I bet you get the royal treatment. I bet no one’s ever oinked at McKeon or Campbell. But the lesser lights, we are being told, can be treated shamefully. It’s not old-school, it’s cowardice among coaches. So many of these swimmers are young. Impressionable. Vulnerable. If all a coach cares about is the clock, his service to his athlete is a crock. Every truly great sports coach in history has held a deep interest in the human development of the athlete they’re mentoring.

Swimming has never sunk this low. The lack of interest from TV broadcasters in the Olympic trials shows the connection with the public had already been lost. That’s on SA’s head. McKeon and Campbell and company should have been ropeable at the lack of exposure. The sickening treatment of some swimmers only widens the divide. SA hardly seems a mob worth getting behind. They hardly seem in a hurry to explain what needs to be explained. The pig noises. The six-one-twenty code among coaches. The body-shaming. All of that needs to be addressed. I nearly fell off my chair when I read one of Grant Hackett’s quotes. To be fair, Hackett said anyone responsible for wrongdoing should be given the old heave-ho. But then he said: “It’s a shame all this has come to the surface.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. ’Tis a blessing. For those who truly care about the sport, for those who understand the importance of treating young people rightly and respectfully, for those who see sport as a way to make these growing souls better people as well as performers, for those who view a young female athlete’s brain as being more important then her boobs and her bum, the revelations are the best thing that could have happened. It’s what Cape Town was to Australian cricket. An opportunity for overdue change. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for Groves’s meeting with Perkins and Baumann. She deserves a medal before Tokyo even begins. So does McMahon. What they have started is gold.