Doping cheats stole our medals
BILL FURNISS could smile after his British swimmers racked up the country’s largest medal haul since 1908, but he then immediately criticised the ‘elephant in the pool’ — the drugs cheats who robbed his team of even more bounty.
The head coach had declared the doping topic taboo during the championship, knowing that there was no use wasting energy on the medically enhanced frauds.
But, speaking minutes after his 4 x 100metres medley relay men, fired by the turbo-charged Adam Peaty, had come a brilliant second to take the team’s medal haul to six — one gold, five silvers — he turned his attention to seven frustrating fourth-placed finishes.
Unprompted, Furniss said: ‘This is Britain’s best-ever swimming performance at a modern Olympics. We were pretty resilient and that’s what we have been working on.
‘Six medals is great, but it sticks in my throat that an individual failed a drug test in at least three of the finals where we finished fourth.
‘We have been penalised more than any other nation here.
‘My message to the people who govern our sport is that we want a clean sport. I have got certain individuals to whom I have got to explain that they have done everything right and they are not being looked after.
‘Everything seems to be focused on how fair we can be to people who have not passed drugs tests. It is just not right.’
The swimming has been cursed by the IOC’s weak decision not to ban the entire Russian team for state-sponsored doping, a mistake compounded by the sport’s governing body FINA failing to take their own zero-tolerance line when responsibility was passed on to the federations.
That error was rammed home on the final evening when Fran Halsall was robbed of her first Olympic medal across three Games by Belarusian Aliaksandra Herasimenia, in the 50m freestyle. Herasimenia, who was convicted of drug-taking in 2003, pipped Halsall to bronze by just 0.03sec.
One of the most controversial figures in Rio is Russian Yulia Efimova, who has twice been banned, only to win last-minute dispensation to take part.
She claimed two silvers, one of which meant Chloe Tutton left the pool without a medal in the 200m breaststroke.
The third casualty was James Guy, who missed out in the 200m freestyle in a race won by Sun Yang, the Chinese who took a metabolic modulator two years ago.
Thankfully, Guy had a late laugh when he went head-to-head with Michael Phelps in the closing race of the week and pretty much held his own to help Britain to that final silver against the unbeatable Americans in the medley relay.
The British quartet of Chris Walker-Hebborn, whose father Andy was diagnosed with cancer just before the Games, Peaty, Guy and Duncan Scott banished the horror of London 2012, when the swimming contingent collected just three medals, none of them gold.
Furniss, who took over in 2013, has made the squad leaner. Only 26 places, rather than a flabby 40-odd, were on offer this time around.
In Peaty, Britain have a world star. His breaststroke leg of the relay was inside his solo world-record time of 57.13sec — an astonishing 56.59 — to zoom from sixth place to first. He could have been wearing an outboard motor.
His gold and relay silver led the list with two silvers for Jazz Carlin, one for Siobhan-Marie O’Connor in the 200m individual medley, and another in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay.
Peaty, 21, echoed Furniss’s hard-line views, saying: ‘Convicted drug cheats should be out. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done it or been caught.’
The words were spoken like the true champion he is.