‘There are no excuses, drugs in sport has been a hot issue for too long’

In case you missed it, Australian swimmer Mack Horton created an international controversy by refusing to share the podium with a Chinese swimmer over doping allegations. It was a gutsy stance at the World Championship swimming competition held in South Korea recently. Equally as shocking has been the revelation that another Australian swimmer, Shayna Jack, tested positive for a banned substance.

One might think that Horton’s position is a bit hypocritical given doping is now affecting one of his team members, but no, I disagree. I congratulate Mack Horton for his firm stance and his openness in condemning drug cheats, regardless of uniform or country. He acknowledged his disappointment that his fellow Dolphins team member had returned a positive sample, but applauded the decision to withdraw Jack from further competition until the matter is resolved, something that has not happened in the case of Sun Yang.

All the authorities with their acronyms (if you toss them into the pool you’ll get alphabet soup) will WADA yadda yadda longer than the time it takes for a lactic-acid burnished athlete to finish the 1,500 metres and we still won’t be the wiser or better off for it. Bureaucracy. Gotta love red tape. Not.

I recall all the rules and regulations of competition swimming when my brother, Clive, and I used to swim with the Essendon Swimming Club, um … circa 1962-ish. Drugs were never an issue back then, but actually it was because of drugs that we started swimming in the first place.

I had quite severe asthma as a small child. I remember our family doctor pulling up outside our house in a dark blue car, grabbing a large black bag and walking up to our door, rat-a-tat-tat. Mum, wearing her pinched mother face, would open the door and Doctor Jefferies would come into our bedroom uttering blithe patronising doctor speak. “Now, how are we today?”

The treatment back in those pre-puffer days was an injection into the butt cheek and a prescription for tablets that were pink, bitter, and totally gag-worthy! He always left the room with an admonishment for Mum: “Get her into swimming. It will improve her lung capacity!”

God only knows why Mum enrolled me in calisthenics, which is not quite gymnastics, nor dance, but it got me moving. Through the coughs and gasps I grew older and stronger and went on to win many medals, but only one gold.

Concurrently, Dad enrolled Clive and I into Saturday mornings at the Essendon baths for swimming lessons, which led to competitive club races, which led to state championships. Clive and I were also successful in our respective school swimming teams.

I moved onto springboard diving for a couple of years then in my 20s took up synchronised swimming. God, that was so hard. People pooh-pooh synchronised swimming, but you need to be stronger than most athletes, have a ballet-dancer’s training and constantly work on building up endurance.

Our weekly training sessions were held in a 20-foot diving pool. For two hours solid we practiced all those stupid moves you see on television — upside down, feet oop-boop-de-do-ing in the air, splits, and somersaults in slow-mo to muffled music pumped out via underwater speakers. And smile, smile, smile, with a nose clip clamped on your face and Vaseline in your hair.

In training, you were not allowed to touch the sides of the pool, and there was never a bottom to rest your feet on. For two hours it was treading water. Exhausting. So much so that getting out of the pool, even raising your arms to grab on to the ladder handrails, was almost unattainable at times.

I loved it! Well, for a couple of years. After two years of marriage I found we were suddenly expecting! My obstetrician/gynaecologist advised that being upside down in metres of water holding my breath and doing the splits was probably not a good idea, so that put an end to synchro.

Throughout married life I was always doing some kind of sport. For over 20 years we carted our two kids around sundry tennis courts as we played social tennis with a large group of friends. I played netball in a work team; after work I was involved in many pursuits at different times — water aerobics, classical ballet or jazz, or tap dancing. I snorkelled for many years and these days, on the wrong side of 60, I’ve taken up Tai Chi which I’m really enjoying.

As I ponder how the World Anti-doping Authority (WADA), the Chinese Swimming Association and other countries’ swimming governing bodies will thresh out a solution to the unfair use of drugs in sport, I realised this has been going on for years across all sports. Think about it, tennis shrieker Maria Sharipova; soccer’s Diego Maradona; Ben Johnson in athletics; Lance Armstrong in cycling and Shoaib Akhtar in cricket, just to name a few.

The world’s athletes, both today and in the future, need not government posturing but the creation and delivery of a fair playing field (or pool) for all and a commitment to justice to uphold it.

What are your thoughts on this issue? What other instances of drugs in sport do you recall?

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