Another Olympics, another doping scandal in swimming: 'Maybe this sport's not fair'

INDIANAPOLIS — For the first time in its storied history, the U.S. Olympic swimming team will be selected over the next nine days in a most unconventional place: an indoor NFL stadium. 

But for all of the swimmers vying to qualify for the 2024 Paris Games, there is nothing unconventional about the storyline threading through their Olympic quest. 

Put simply: Another Olympics, another doping scandal. 

From one generation to the next, American swimmers, as well as swimmers from around the world, have had to face competitors from nations that were suspected, and often later confirmed, to be using performance-enhancing drugs. 

There is no way to think of the performers and performances of the 1970s and 1980s without one nation, now long gone, coming to mind: East Germany. The East Germans’ stain on the Olympic record book and on the lives and careers of countless swimmers who were denied medals they should have won remains one of the most ignominious legacies of the Olympic Games. 

China notoriously reared its head in the doping game in the 1990s and Russia did so in the 2010s, while Ireland’s Michelle Smith was banned from the sport for four years and never came back after winning three gold medals at the 1996 Atlanta Games, gold medals she still has to this day. 

Now, we’re back to China, and in a big way. In April, The New York Times and German public broadcaster ARD reported that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the exact same banned substance — trimetazidine (TMZ), which is the drug Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was found to have taken — but were allowed to continue to compete and in some cases win medals at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. 

On the eve of the U.S. Olympic trials, which begin in Lucas Oil Stadium Saturday morning, the Times reported that three of those swimmers also failed tests for a different drug several years earlier, but those positive tests also were kept secret and the athletes were not suspended. Two of them were gold medalists in Tokyo, and all three are expected to compete in Paris next month. 

“It’s not great,” two-time Olympic gold medalist Lilly King said Friday afternoon. "It’s extremely frustrating I think for the athletes just to always have in the back of our mind that maybe this sport’s not fair. We put everything on the line, our privacy, really everything that we do to compete with a level playing field. It’s extremely frustrating to not have faith that others are doing the same thing.”

Forty years ago, Nancy Hogshead and Rowdy Gaines were gold medalists at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. They remember the heartache during those days and share with today’s swimmers the uncertainty of this era. 

“Throughout my nine years on the U.S. national swimming team, the East Germans doped with testosterone and other types of anabolic steroids,” Hogshead texted Friday. “It was the world’s worst-kept secret. 

“The difference now is that athletes are not told that if they speak up about the unfairness or an un-level playing field, they’ll be sent home, like we were,” she said. “Athletes continue to advocate for the most intrusive types of testing imaginable: allowing a tester to knock on an athlete’s door without warning. The tester must watch the urine leave the body, leaving no place for modesty or privacy. Yes, that’s how much we all value a fair, level playing field.”

To that end, Katie Ledecky, the greatest female swimmer in history who is expected to make her fourth Olympic team Saturday, is such a stickler about drug testing that she will update her U.S. Anti-Doping app if she unexpectedly needs to go to the grocery store for a few items. She does this on the off chance that a tester could arrive during the time she is away. 

Such is the history, and the reality, of her sport.

“It takes me back 40-45 years,” Gaines said. “I’ll never forget Shirley Babashoff, saying they cheated, the East Germans, and she was called 'Surly Shirley,' and everybody was making fun of her and didn’t believe her.”

Babashoff of course was right, but she paid a huge price for it. Coming into the 1976 Montreal Olympics as the favorite to win several gold medals and become a star of the Games, she was beaten time and again by East Germans who later were revealed to have been doping for years. Although she and her American teammates did win gold in the 4x100 freestyle relay, hers is one of the most devastating stories in the history of Olympic doping. 

“There are cheaters all around the world, no doubt in my mind,” Gaines said. But he added a hopeful note. “I do believe that the vast majority of athletes around the world are clean.”