I don't blame swimmers at the World Champs in South Korea one little bit for refusing to take the podium alongside Sun Yang.
Aussie swimmer Mack Horton was the first throw down the gauntlet. Sun, who has served one doping ban and is the subject of further allegations, relegatedHorton to silver in the 400m final last Sunday and, when it came time for the medal ceremony, Horton refused to shake Sun's hand or stand with him for the photo op.
Their bad blood goes back a long way. Olympic gold medal-winning Horton is convinced his Chinese arch-rival is a cheat, a bully and a word that rhymes with banker. Sun dismissed Horton as a sore loser, but when Brit Duncan Scott followed Horton's lead at a subsequent medal presentation, Sun lost his cool.
"You're a loser, I'm winning," he shouted at Scott.
The sport's governing body, Fina, censured both swimmers for the scene, but then in a bizarre and pathetic response to the podium protests, it issued a decree that athletes can receive a ban or lose their medal if they indulge in "any political, religious or discriminatory statement or behaviour" at the podium.
Britain's bronze medalist Duncan Scott, right, looks to gold medalist China's Sun Yang, left, as joint bronze medal winner Russia's Martin Malyutin looks on during the medal ceremony. Photo / AP
I suppose this sort of cowardly response from a sport's governing body is par for the course. They're a craven lot, in the main, sports administrators. Change in any sport tends to come from the athlete up, not from the bureaucrat down. They're not ones to grasp the nettle and deal with the difficult issues.
Sun received a three-month ban from the Chinese Swimming Association in 2014 for taking a banned substance. Last September, he was involved in a fracas at his home when international dope testers turned up for the obligatory blood and urine samples. Sun wasn't there, but after a phone call, he turned up with his entourage including his mother, his bodyguards and his doctor.
He refused to supply the urine sample and, when one of the testers couldn't produce the approved evidence of her qualifications, a bodyguard smashed the vials of blood with a hammer. Bizarre.
A Fina panel absolved Sun and blamed the tester for failing to carry identification. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) however, has a Court of Arbitration in Sport appeal scheduled for September. Sun's fate remains unknown.
Duncan Scott, left, refuses to shake Sun Yang's hand after 200m freestyle final at the World Swimming Championships. Photo / AP
Swimming is a tough, lonely sport. Champions spend hours, days, months and years in the pool, slogging away to improve their stamina and their speed and their technique in a bid to shave hundredths of seconds off their times. They want to compete against athletes who have made the same sacrifices they have. They don't want to be pipped at the wall by an athlete who's opted to take a chemical cocktail to give them an edge.
The court of public opinion is a savage one and one that doesn't require cold, hard evidence of wrongdoing.
Just a whiff of it can be enough, and if the accused is an unlikeable arrogant oik, well, a guilty verdict is almost guaranteed.
Sun's peers certainly think he's a cheat — Horton received a standing ovation from his fellow swimmers when he returned to the athletes' village after his protest.
If workplace rules applied to the pool, Sun's failure to provide samples would mean he would be suspended from his job until such time as he supplied them. That's what should have happened last year. The onus should have been on Sun to supply blood and urine samples as required, especially given his earlier ban.
But Sun is a sporting superstar from a powerful nation. Fina is contorting itself to placate China, rather than protecting its athletes.
In my view, it should be taking a hard line with arrogant tossers like Sun and keeping him out of the pool until such time as Wada's appeal is heard.
He may yet be found innocent. But that will only be in the eyes of the court and his millions of Chinese fans. The rest of the world will have their own opinion.
