Swimming: Sweetenham warns: the cheats are back

Andrew Longmore
Sunday 04 August 2002 00:00 BST
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On the final weekend of a triumphant Commonwealth Games for the home teams in the pool, the head of British swimming has drawn uncomfortable parallels with a past his sport would rather forget. Bill Sweetenham, performance director of the Amateur Swimming Association, an Australian with the slow smile of a gunslinger and a tendency to shoot from the hip, yesterday suggested that swimming was on the verge of a return to the dark days of the former East Germany when drug-taking was not simply a matter of individual choice but a systematic part of the athletic culture.

It will not please Jacques Rogge, the recently appointed president of the International Olympic Commission, or Dick Pound, head of WADA, the world anti-doping agency, to learn that Sweetenham readily contrasted these "clean" Commonwealth Games with the Olympics where, he implied, British swimmers would have to compete against nations using systematic drugs programmes.

Such is the strength of suspicion in the sport that news of records tumbling at the European Championships in Berlin caused one coach in Manchester to run a pen through performances he considered to be illegal. There were not many names left on the list.

"This has been a great meeting because it's been a fair fight," said the controversial Australian. "This has been a drugs-free competition. But I don't think all nations have the same standards and it may be different at the Olympic Games in Athens.

"There's a strong feeling among the coaches that there are certain nations back en masse fighting a pharmaceutical war. I think we are turning towards the bad old days of the GDR in the Seventies. I think we're close to that now. We're right back there. You can't say with any certainty, but the feeling among the coaching fraternity in the clean countries is that some of the others have their hands in the cookie jar and the cookies are getting more advanced."

Sweetenham further suggested that the gap between the cheats and the anti-doping police was widening, an accusation which casts serious doubts on the efficiency of the sport's drug-testing programme. "When you bring in something like gene therapy, the list is endless. You just keep heading off in other medical directions. I can't control what others are doing. When the bar is raised, you just have to match it in the right way with better coaching and whatever you can manage."

Only the fittest and strongest have survived the 52-year-old's tempestuous first 20 months in charge. The motto of the team is "winning is the only option". For those unwilling to buy into such a blatantly Antipodean philosophy, the departure door is clearly marked. Sweetenham, rotund, outspoken, ruthless, demanding and utterly committed, does not suffer fools nor does he foster the sort of soft mentality widely ridiculed down Sydney way. Swimmers are set simple competitive guidelines: within two per cent of a personal best in the heats, one per cent in the semi-finals, PB in the final. Anything less is considered a failure.

Coaches are put under as much pressure as athletes in Sweetenham's Darwinian system. Two days before James Goddard was due to compete in the 200m backstroke, Sweetenham asked his coach, Sean Kelly, a simple question. "Is yer boy going to win the 200?" Kelly said: "Yes."

On the day of the event, Sweetenham had further words. "So," he told Kelly, "today's the day we'll know whether Sean Kelly can coach or not." But when Kelly was proved right, the Australian was the first with the pat on the back.

Typically, Sweetenham's initial reaction to the unexpectedly robust challenge to Australian domination of the pool, highlighted by an astonishing success in the women's 4 x 200m freestyle relay, one of four golds on the night, is not unfettered euphoria but honest appraisal.

"I want to play down the results here," he warned. "We're still a long way from where we want to be. What's the problem? Limited budgets, no facilities, competitive structure, have you got a couple of hours? There's no guarantee that if you spend a lot of money, you'll get success, but there is a guarantee that if you spend no money, you'll get nothing. If I had a magic wand, the first thing I would change is the facilities.

"I think Britain can be up there challenging, but I don't want to die wondering whether we can do it. I want it to happen in my lifetime. We have to change the competitive philosophy. There should be no soft swims, no soft events." Britain's reliance on 25m short course competition has to change, he says. "It's like Tiger Woods playing crazy golf."

Tomorrow morning, at 6am, the team will depart for the Greek national championships in the Olympic city before moving to a training camp in Cyprus. On Christmas Day, training will be optional. On the eve of the Games, Sweetenham called the teams from England, Wales and Scotland together for a meeting. Forget racing each other, he said, concentrate on beating the rest. The wider question for the sport is whether, at the Olympics, they can expect a fair fight.

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