World body FINA yesterday rejected a proposal to halve suspensions for first-time drug cheats from four to two years. The FINA congress in Perth voted unanimously against a motion put forward by the FINA bureau to institute a minimum two-year suspension.
A congress spokesman said speakers against the motion - representing Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Barbados - said doping controversies had damaged world swimming's potential growth. The speakers said halving the suspensions would not, as suggested, prevent feared legal challenges to FINA's imposition of the bans.
A spokesman for the FINA bureau said it thought setting a lower minimum suspension might be useful, but the decision was left up to the FINA congress. The FINA bureau's proposal was attacked by local media as an attempt to water down the organisation's drug-use penalties despite evidence of systematic doping.
The decision and the media criticism comes amid a row over German head coach Winfried Leopold, who admitted administering drugs to swimmers in the former East Germany. FINA announced on Sunday that it had withdrawn Leopold's accreditation for the eighth world championships, but the German Swimming Federation (DSV) was seeking to have him reinstated.
The Australian said in an editorial that FINA had acted clumsily in the Leopold affair. "It has to be said that the federation has been extraordinarily clumsy in acting against Leopold this week - and has shown itself to be apparently incapable of a rigorous and methodical enforcement of anti-doping policies.
"He (Leopold) was publicly punished by the German federation in 1992, yet FINA claims the first it knew of his history was last week when he repeated his admission that he had administered illegal performance-enhancing drugs to athletes under the East German regime. If it did know of Leopold's involvement in a discredited regime yet took no action until now, it is shown to be an organisation more concerned with public relations than tackling drugs in sport."
The local West Australian newspaper splashed a front-page headline "FINA goes soft on swim drug cheats," and said: "For too long, FINA has twiddled its thumbs as it makes loud noises about imposing severe penalties on drug cheats. Meanwhile, the perpetrators are stealing world records and Olympic medals from clean athletes."
Meanwhile, the Chinese swim team arrived yesterday for the championships refuting allegations of systematic drug abuse. The Chinese have aroused suspicion over their spectacular improvement in world swimming since 1994, with allegations of drug abuse, particularly among their women swimmers.
Don Talbot, the head Australian swim coach, has been one of China's most hostile critics.
Suspicions about the Chinese surfaced again in the run-up to the Perth championships after world-shattering performances at last October's Chinese National Games in Shanghai. Chinese women set two world records and recorded 1997 best times in eight of 13 individual events, prompting Talbot to label them drug cheats.
The Australian Swimming Coaches Association last year called on world governing body FINA to impose a blanket ban on Chinese competitors at the Perth world championships over their suspicions of drug use.
The head of the Chinese delegation, Shi Tianshu, declared his athletes "clean" upon their arrival yesterday. He cautioned Talbot to "get the facts" before pointing the finger at China.
Shi said FINA had carried out more than 100 out-of-competition tests on Chinese swimmers in the past two months and none had turned out positive. "The Chinese Swimming Federation has taken serious anti-doping measures also, conducting more than 650 tests in the past year," he said.
The championships get underway with men's and women's open water five-kilometre races early today.
