Outside of the Olympics, very few people in this country care much about competitive swimming. It’s a sport that largely exists in the shadows, musty natatoriums where the vast majority of spectators are related to the athletes. Hardly any Americans could name a swimmer besides Michael Phelps, and it only took him becoming perhaps the most decorated athlete in history to get there.
But every fourth summer, the underwater world rises to the surface, and Americans become somewhat infatuated by a sport we otherwise view as recreation. That’s where we are right now, where a heathy dash of patriotism buoys the sport to life.
Right now, American swimmer Lilly King is fully above water and on display. It’s not simply because she won Gold in the 100-meter breast stroke earlier this week, although that certainly does create some interest. It’s how she got there – and against whom. Finishing second to King was Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, who found out the day before the Games that she would in fact be allowed to swim at these Oympics. Efimova, like all Russian Olympians, had to be individually cleared to compete, a compromise by the IOC in response to Russia’s well-documented, state supported, performance enhancing drug program. Many argued the entire team should have been banned, like they did for the Russian Paralympic squad. For whatever reason, and it’s always political, the IOC didn’t. Which is how Yulia Efimova ended up one lane away from Lilly King in the Games’ most uncomfortable rivalry so far. Efimova had served a 16 month drug ban a few years back for taking steroids, something she only recently apologized for. Then earlier this year, she tested positive for Meldonium, the same drug that knocked Maria Sharapova out of tennis. That was supposed to be it for Efimova; except on the eve of the Games, she got a surprising stay of execution, perhaps because she’s largely trained in the US, supposedly outside the controls of Russian officials. Regardless, Efimova instantly became a posterchild for drug cheats that get away with it.
Lilly King took that quite personally. So when Efimova raised her finger with the number one sign after winning a semifinal heat, King pointed a finger right back at her. Well, to the TV screen in the waiting room, all of which was caught on camera. King left no room for interpretation, chastising the Russian for her transgressions during interviews. And after King won the gold, during the press conference, she said, “It just proves you can compete clean and still come out on top.” King also said she “basically said what everybody’s thinking” and other swimmers “were glad I spoke out.”
Not that Efimova needed any additional confirmation, as she was soundly booed when she entered the pool. It was enough to bring her to tears after her heats, and the emotional strain was clear during perhaps the most uncomfortable medal ceremony since 1968.
It’s easy to side with Lilly King and against Yulia Efimova, especially given what we seem to know – that Efimova has a history of using drugs, and King seems to be clean. I’ll take that at face value, even though it’s hard to know anything anymore when it comes to sports and drugs. And Russia’s drug program is more organized than Thanksgiving at Martha Stewart’s house. So there is some objective good and bad here.
But two things. First, we shouldn’t confuse American with good and Russian with bad. Our two best men’s sprinters on the track team served suspensions for PED use. Several others have dodged allegations. And countless athletes from countries across the globe have athletes who most certainly have and continue to uses performance enhancing drugs, but just won’t ever get caught. And some of those might be the most vocal against people like Efimova. That’s the messed up sports world we live in. So I’d caution all from feeling to self-righteous in this current cold war of words.
Second, while this battle rages at the individual level, it’s truly one of policy and ideology. Russian athletes – virtually all Russian athletes – have been trained in a culture of PED’s, where drug use is essentially a team mandate. Such is likely true of other nations, or perhaps subcultures within those. One could argue that in free democracies like the US and Canada, individual training programs and coaches use a similar process. For example, many are suspicious of Alberto Salazar’s Oregon Project for distance runners. And who knows what happened in the Santa Monica Track Club of the 1980’s, when drugs were like PEZ. This all exists in a system that largely privileges PED use, since the risk/reward formula largely favors the risk takers. Earning a gold medal is worth millions, and losing clean is worth, well, whatever you think it is. And as anyone in sports knows by now, they’ll never catch ‘em all. Which is why Michael Phelps recently said he doubts he’s ever swam in a clean sport. So hate Yulia Efimova if you’d like. But know she’s not the problem. She’s merely a symptom.
Of course, in a couple of weeks, people will stop hating. Because as we know, most don’t care much about competitive swimming anyway.
Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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