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Thorpe's critics come out
Posted: Wednesday February 02, 2000 12:06 PM
SHEFFIELD, England (Reuters) -- Australian head coach Don Talbot hit out against the mistrust engendered by the scourge of drug abuse on Wednesday after world champion Ian Thorpe became the latest top swimmer to have his achievements called into question. German men's team coach Manfred Thiesmann said fellow coaches had raised suspicion about Thorpe when the 17-year-old Australian, the youngest men's world champion in swimming history, broke his own 200-meter freestyle world short-course record at a World Cup meeting in Sydney in January. "We sat in the stands in Sydney. When he swam the record they all shook their heads," Thiesmann said. Asked about comments he had made to a German magazine reporter, Thiesmann said: "In no circumstance did I say he took drugs... [but] many people think it." Thorpe himself, faced with a question on drug use after the first day of a two-day World Cup meeting in the Ponds Forge pool on Tuesday, said he deplored doping which has scarred the sport and that he had never used drugs. "A lot of countries don't believe you can get to a particular level without being enhanced by other forms that aren't naturally occurring in your body and aren't natural to what we do. It's sad that it happens," Thorpe said. "I know that I've never taken anything and I never will either. I don't understand the concept of people taking drugs of any form. It's inexcusable." Head coach Talbot, a fierce critic of China and the long record of drug abuse among their swimmers, took Thiesmann's comments philosophically -- "We're not going to get in a sweat about it." He said the German had been "a friend of ours for a long time" and shared the feeling of frustration at shortcomings in the fight against doping. "It's an undeniable fact that we've got to have a fool-proof system," Talbot told Reuters. "It's up to the IOC [International Olympic Committee] and FINA [International Amateur Swimming Federation] to do something about it but they won't take the step. "They've got to start taking blood. It's the only way to be sure if someone is cheating or not... "Penny Heyns has been accused, [Pieter] van den Hoogenband has been accused, Kieren Perkins has been accused of taking drugs and none of these people have been found to be positive." Talbot said Australia had been among teams which had undergone voluntary blood-testing at last April's world short-course championships in Hong Kong and Thorpe had been one of those tested. "It really does anger me that swimmers doing the right things are being accused of being drug takers," Talbot said. He said more great swimmers were being accused of drug-taking in the last few years than ever before in his 30-year coaching career. "Why should they try to rip them down and make them squirm when they're not doing anything wrong?" Germany's Thiesmann told Reuters: "As long as it can't be proved that someone has taken drugs, they have not taken drugs. Only it's astonishing how some records have been lowered so strongly recently. You can believe that when there are such extreme changes it's not always done with the right things, correctly." He said there were naturally suspicions when Thorpe was swimming so much faster than his rivals but there was no proof, the Australian had never tested positive and he himself was making no accusations. Thiesmann said that it was wrong to attack China for swimming well when your own country was performing just as well and added that he did not believe doping was going on all over China now.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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