American swimming records and drug cheats

By China Watcher

At the current US Olympic trials for Beijing, I was taken by surprise of the impressive times registered by the swimmers in the men and women 100m backstrokes, the women in particular dropping below the 59-second barrier. Six world records have now fallen in the first three days of the eight-day competition.

If the swimmers were Chinese and the world records were broken in an international meet, most of the Western journalists or sports critics would conveniently link or accuse the Chinese of adopting a “systematic” doping program because in their own measurable bias standards, these feats are just beyond the Chinese people to achieve. The Western media would then continue to harp on the use of drugs in the Chinese training program.

When the US swimmers achieved the near impossible feat – lowering of six world records in 3 days – no questions were asked and somehow, everyone seem to accept this as a normal event and that this is a result of good and well planned training.

I have always been suspicious of the US and the Australian swimmers and so far, I can only make insinuations remarks like what the rest of the Western swimmers did to the Chinese swimmers in the 1990s.

Though past Australian swimmer like Ian Thorpe has been cleared of any drug tainted development, I think that the sports doping program especially in swimming is far more sophisticated in that under normal testing using urine samples, these chemical-assisted athletes would most likely escape undetected.

I have always favored a drug testing program that allows for blood test – which is a much better form of testing to weed out the drug cheats. Guess who objected to this form of testing – the US and most of the Western countries. Unless FINA or the IOC approves a more elaborate and effective testing procedures, there will be many Olympians or record breakers who are actually drug cheats.

Lastly, just a point for thought, in which part of the world would we be able to find the most advanced and sophisticated drugs or the best pharmaceutical drug companies? Not in Eastern Europe anymore.