The picture no Aussie swimmer ever wanted to see: Coach Michael Bohl working with athletes embroiled in doping scandal

One of Australia’s most revered coaches has been snapped by the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece posing for selfies with the same swimmers who escaped sanction after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

The photos Australian swimming never wanted to see.

These are the shocking photos no-one in Australian swimming ever imagined possible.

Australian master swim coach Michael Bohl has been snapped by the Chinese Communist Party’s media mouthpiece posing for selfies with some of the same swimmers who secretly escaped punishment after testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug.

Dressed in a Chinese team shirt and grinning from ear to ear, Aussie swim fans would be forgiven for thinking the fresh pictures of Bohl with Qin Haiyang and Zhang Yufei were photoshopped - but they are for real.

In a move that has already sent shockwaves through the swim world, Bohl is helping the Chinese sink the Dolphins at the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Instead of prowling the pool deck at this week’s Australian championships, as he has previously done for decades, Bohl has taken his stopwatch and clipboard to the people’s republic.

Qin Haiyang (R) poses for a photo with coach Bohl during China's National Spring Swimming Championships. Picture via Xinhua

Bohl is now overseeing the preparations of more than a dozen top Chinese swimmers, including at least two of the 23 competitors who tested positive to trimetazidine (TMZ), the same prohibited drug that Sun Yang was once banned for, at a training camp held just months before the start of the delayed 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Chinese anti-doping authorities (CHINADA) acquitted all 23 swimmers after deeming the positive samples were the result of eating contaminated food prepared in a hotel kitchen. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) controversially backed China’s ruling without lodging an appeal, prompting complaints of bias from American anti-doping regulators and many past and present swimmers, including Australians.

A year after the details of the secret tests were first made public by this masthead, new research has found that 25 Aussie swimmers directly missed out on getting upgraded medals they would have received if the Chinese had been issued with the recommended four-year bans for TMZ.

One of the world’s greatest swim coaches who oversaw the careers of Olympic superstars including Stephanie Rice, Emma McKeon and Kaylee McKeown, the timing of Bohl’s decision to take on the job in China has stunned the Australian swimming community.

The 63-year-old declined to speak with CODE Sports about his new role helping the Chinese but did agree to a recent interview with Xinhua, the official Chinese state-run newsagency which distributes information for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Unsurprisingly, Bohl spoke glowingly about the bright future he sees for China’s swimmers.

He also singled out Pan Zhanle’s world record breaking victory over Australian sprinter Kyle Chalmers in the men’s 100 metres freestyle at

last year’s Paris Olympics as a watershed moment.

China’s Zhang Yufei with coach Bohl during China's National Spring Swimming Championships. Picture via Xinhua

“I think when Pan pops up and wins an Olympic gold medal, it gives the swimming population in China a lot more self-belief and confidence. Seeing someone from their country perform well at the highest level builds a lot of confidence within the nation,” Bohl was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

“So, the more success China has domestically, the more important it becomes internationally. I believe we will see more and more swimmers performing at that high level.

“The potential for China to continue improving and excelling in swimming is huge. There are so many more potential athletes out there,”

Bohl also praised Qin, who narrowly beat Australia’s Zac Stubblety-Cook for the 200m breaststroke gold at the 2023 world championships less than a year before the details of his failed test in 2021 became public knowledge.

“I’ve been super impressed with the way Haiyang has worked over the last nine weeks. He’s been very good in training, great in strength conditioning, and awesome in the pool,” Bohl said.

“If the spirit is willing and the mind is willing, and the body can hold together, then anything is possible.”

According to Xinhua, Bohl is currently coaching 13 Chinese swimmers, including four who competed at the Paris Olympics, where the Chinese won 12 medals, trailing only the United States (28) and Australia (12).

It is common knowledge in swimming circles that China is obsessed with wanting to become the sport’s next superpower so is actively headhunting top foreign coaches ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles and 2032 Brisbane Olympics.

Denis Cotterell, one of Bohl’s closest friends and former mentors, has long been a pioneer with Team China, overseeing the career of Sun, China’s most successful and divisive swimmer.

Cotterell briefly parted ways with the Chinese while Sun was serving a lengthy ban for tampering with his samples before they could be tested for performance-enhancing drugs, but he is back on the payroll, with Sun, now 33, on track to make his international comeback at this year’s world championships in Singapore.

The obvious attraction for foreign coaches agreeing to help China’s swimmers is the eye-watering salaries on offer, with unconfirmed reports of some getting paid up to $1 million a year, more than five times what they get for doing the same work in their homelands.

But switching sides sometimes comes with flak.

Australia’s Ken Wood was slammed for accepting the big bucks on offer to coach China’s Liu Zige to win gold in the women’s 200m butterfly at 2008 Beijing Olympics, beating Australia’s Jessicah Schipper, who Wood had previously trained for a decade.

Branded a traitor for sharing Schipper’s training program with her opponents, Woods came clean about why he flipped over to help the Chinese: “They pay good money, big money. I wouldn’t help them for nothing,” he said at the time.

Luring Bohl is arguably Chinese swimming’s biggest coup because of his long and outstanding record of success.

In high-demand, Bohl is no stranger to working with Asian swimmers in the past. He coached Korea’s Park Tae-hwan to win gold at the Beijing Olympics. They parted ways in 2015. Park was later banned after testing positive for steroids.

As with Cotterell and Wood, there has never been any suggestion Bohl has been involved or condones drug use in swimming but there was no mention of China’s appalling record of sports doping in his interview with Xinhua, as he proclaimed his ambition of wanting to aid the Chinese peak at the biggest show in sport.

“We don’t want the best results to come two years before the Olympics,” he said. “We want the athletes performing at their absolute best when it matters most.”

Originally published as The picture no Aussie swimmer ever wanted to see: Coach Michael Bohl working with athletes embroiled in doping scandal