Sun Yang putting FINA to the test
Onus on new leaders
DISGRACED Chinese swimmer Sun Yang has given the sport’s new leadership an early test of how serious they are about implementing their historic reforms, after finding himself back in hot water.
Currently serving a second doping suspension that prevented him from competing at the Tokyo Olympics, the serial rule breaker is again under investigation after pictures surfaced of him secretly training in Chinese government-funded facilities.
That’s a crystal-clear breach of the conditions for every swimmer serving a doping suspension, let alone a repeat offender, who now faces a lengthy extension to his ban that could render him ineligible for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
But that’ll only happen if officials deliver on their promise to allow independent investigators to properly punish everyone that breaks the rules instead of going weak at the knees when swimmers from powerful countries such as China or Russia are implicated.
The signs are positive the tide has turned after swimming’s global governing body FINA voted to accept a range of reforms that would effectively blow up the 113-year organisation and start from scratch.
The vote, taken on the sidelines of the shortcourse world championships in Abu Dhabi at the weekend, overwhelmingly approved a raft of radical governance changes that would drag swimming into the 21st century, including:
The creation of an independent integrity unit to deal with doping and other serious violations;
• Protocols to protect athletes from harassment and abuse;
• A new constitution and code of ethics;
• More opportunities women in the sport; and
• More prizemoney for athletes instead of fat cat officials.
Driven by FINA’s newly elected president Husain AlMusallam, the overdue reforms followed a two-year investigation by News Corp that exposed FINA’s reprehensible, dirty secrets, including the way it mishandled serious integrity complaints and spent its vast fortune.
FINA threatened legal action against News Corp for revealing the perks its leaders enjoyed, but everything changed when Al-Musallam was elected as president in June on a platform to clean up the rotten organisation.
“We have been rightly criticised for a lack of transparency and directness,” Al-Musallam told the extraordinary Congress in Abu Dhabi. “These reforms are essential to modernising FINA, but they are just the beginning,” he said. “There is so much more to be done.”
Swimming Australia president Kieren Perkins said he was already witnessing significant changes taking place.
“At an operational level, we‘re seeing engagement with swimming in Australia that brings a level of transparency and clarity to what they’re doing that I’ve certainly not experienced before,” he said.
“Certainly all the early indications are the reform agenda is something that they mean and they’re living.
“But like any significant transformational cultural change, it‘s going to be hard work. It’s going to take a lot of time and it’ll be interesting to see, as they continue to move forward, how that momentum is maintained.” for