Yesterday morning in Seville, at the offices of LEN, the governing body of European swimming, two powerful figures met for a discussion on the future of their sport. Harm Beyer, who is secretary of the European federation and chairman of the doping commission of the world swimming body FINA, spoke with Gunnar Werner, the general secretary of FINA.
They were meeting to try and iron out legislation that could be introduced to their sport which would hit those taking performance-enhancing substances and those who failed to show for out-of-competition testing.
"I'm convinced that aquatic sport is not free of drugs," said Beyer. "We are doing it wrong. We are not really behind measures. We are cowards. What are we doing?"
After the meeting, Beyer spoke widely about the sport he loves and about its serious flaws, about FINA's new association with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and about the problems facing swimming in an era when its principal problem is illegal doping.
Beyer has been in the frontline in Seville all week. He is the guy LEN put forward to answer the difficult questions, to explain the organisation's policies when the television crews and print journalists arrive. He is also a major player in the organisation's decision-making process.
Beyer is also a German judge. Behind every move he makes, his mind is in court: How will the law of the land interpret the laws of swimming? Are they compatible? What is the point of a swimming law that will fall down if an individual takes the matter to a civil court? How can you legally control what athletes do without violating their human rights? How can you force them to give blood, the only way of testing for human growth hormone (hgh), without facing the problems that arise from the invasive nature of taking a blood sample?
Michelle Smith de Bruin recently highlighted her connection with the IOC's project with FINA and spoke of silencing her critics. It is true that she has agreed to give "a blood sample" if invited to do so by FINA.
It is, however, unlikely to silence her hardened critics as the project, approved and financially supported by the IOC and carried out at laboratories in St Thomas' Hospital, London, is a totally voluntary and anonymous experiment.
"It is a project to try and find out whether you can establish a system in regard to the growth hormone," says Beyer. "It is research to see if a system can be established and it is run on a voluntary basis. No athlete is taking part without their full agreement.
"Everyone is insured and ethical procedures are observed. The results will not be published and the tests carried out at St Thomas' hospital will be completely unidentifiable. Although the results will not be published, one year from now there will be a report."
There are athletes in Seville who are already being subjected to the blood-testing project, the first time it has ever been carried out at major event. The anonymous swimmers are attending three doctors at the championships, who are here specifically to collect the samples. They can, however, withdraw from the project whenever they wish. The point is that this project by IOC and FINA is not designed to catch athletes, but to use them for research into the growth hormone. Smith de Bruin's input is welcome, but it will tell her critics nothing.
Beyer understands that the prospect of taking mandatory blood samples is fraught with danger. He sees it as an impossible procedure to reconcile with fundamental rights.
"Personally, I think that legally you can't oblige somebody to accept an injury. To allow someone to put a needle into the body with the risk of injury is a question of human rights. Nobody is allowed to injure me.
"If you state a rule saying that the federation says that you must allow a needle then there is a conflict between the federation and human rights. A positive test could then be challenged on the basis that you were not allowed to put the needle into me at the beginning. We are dealing with a general human right."
What Beyer and Werner hope to push through in Perth next January is a more structured approach to testing. They also want to introduce sanctions against athletes who don't show up for out-of-competition testing.
"In 1994, FINA was a mess," says Beyer. "It was correctly accused of not taking doping matters seriously. They didn't even have a system, a register."
It may seem unbelievable, but FINA have no reliable rules about "no-show tests". If an official tester walks in the front door of an athlete's home and the athlete opens the back door and runs away, FINA are powerless to act.
"We have discussed a new proposal," says Beyer. "This will go to congress in Perth and will be adopted. Then we have a legal basis in court."
This new rule, to be adopted next January, could not have been used against Michelle Smith de Bruin even if it had been in place when she missed two tests between March 1995 and October 1996. The "noshows" of Smith de Bruin, who has never tested positive in any tests, were not consecutive and that will be an important aspect of the new rule.
The new rule will state that an athlete will be provisionally suspended from swimming after two consecutive no-shows. A final decision on sanctions will then be made after a process of investigation and a hearing with FINA. The FINA executive would then decide the consequences of missing the tests.
In addition, the minimum sanction against a swimmer who tests positive after the World Championships will be a two-year suspension and a ban from the following Olympic Games.
But Beyer is not satisfied even by the new laws. The athletes are a small part of the problem. The whole system is at fault.
"I accuse the sports federations, the managers, the coaches, the people from the top to the bottom. I accuse them. They state again and again that they want to eliminate doping in sport. But when it comes to the moment of a hard sanction, they become cowards.
"They say they are against doping, but when their swimmer tests positive they become a defender of their athlete. It is easy to stand against doping until it comes to the moment of consequence. Administrators are not applying their own principles."
Beyer's instincts about the complexities of the law are well-founded. This week and last week legal letters were exchanged between Michelle de Bruin's solicitors and a selection of international journalists because of a discussion which took place this summer on a show chaired by Eamon Dunphy on Radio Ireland. Smith de Bruin's solicitors believe their client was defamed on the programme.
Craig Lord from the London Times received his legal letter before the championships, as did Radio Ireland and David Walsh of the Sun- day Times, while Karin Helmstaedt, a Canadian journalist who works for Swimming News, was handed an envelope while sitting in the gallery of the swimming stadium on the first day of racing. A former Irish international swimmer, working in Seville for an Irish daily newspaper, handed Helmstaedt the solicitor's letter which was given to him by Erik de Bruin.
Helmstaedt subsequently received an apology from the columnist who told her that he had no idea what was contained in the envelope.
Just recently a scientific paper, Hormonal Doping and adrogenization of athletes; A Secret Programme Of The German Democratic Republic Government, 1997, was published by Werner W Franke and Brigitte Berendonk, citing several classified documents saved after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1990.
The paper describes the government's promotion of drug use, notably androgenic steroids, in high-performance sports. Top-secret doctoral theses, scientific reports and reports of physicians and scientists, who were unofficial collaborators with the Ministry of State Security (commonly known as the Stasi), reveal that from 1966 onwards hundreds of physicians and scientists, including top-ranking professors, performed doping research and administered prescription drugs, as well as unapproved experimental drug preparations.
Several thousand athletes were treated with androgens every year, including minors of each sex. Special emphasis was placed on administering androgens to women and adolescent girls because this practice proved to be especially effective for sports performance.
Damaging side effects were reported, some of which required medical and surgical intervention. In addition, several prominent scientists and sports physicians of the GDR contributed to the development of drugs that would evade detection by international doping controls.
This was happening up until seven years ago. Many of those athletes are still competing. Others are quite ill. Beyer's move might seem trivial. But it is a move.
