Last night my kids and I were watching the TdF coverage and had a conversation about doping in sports - we were able to cover examples in most major sports…but not swimming. Has there ever been a swimmer caught doping? What type of doping controls exist in competitive swimming?
It got me thinking about the Santa Clara Swim grand prix we went to a few weeks ago where Phelps swam - does he get tested? how often?
Just curious…
Michelle Smith from Ireland, in the 1996 Olympics. The Chinese women swimmers in the 1990’s. The East Germans in the 1970’s. The list goes on and on…
I think it was David Walsh who wrote some article about a Irish women’s swimmer who dropped something like 19 seconds of her time. nobody wanted to believe it, but how does one drop that amount of time without some “extra help”?
Wasn’t there talk about Thorpe having retired due to a non-negative test?
Steve
The sport is relatively clean now but for a while it was one of the dirtier sports. The entire East German team was on drugs throughout the 70’s. The Chinese did the same in the 80’s. There are still swimmers who get busted. Like any Olympic sport, the international competitors are subjected to year round suprise testing plus testing at meets.
The sport is clean now not so much because swimmers are more honorable than other athletes but because the drugs that work for swimmers (steroids mostly) can be tested for now and most of the non detectable techniques in use in cycling (blood doping etc) don’t work in swimming since the races are very short. Also, there are only a handful of swimmers who make enough money at it to be able to fork over $100K or more to a witch doctor to get into an undetectable program 
There have been lots of single people getting popped. Americans included.
As far as “scandals”. I think the east gemrans in the 70s and chinese in the 90s are probably the best example sof systematic doping. You could just look at the east germans and tell, in the case of the chinese it was just all of a sudden out of nowhere they had girls smashing world records in the year leading up to the olympics.
Yes, there is random out of competition and in competition testing for swimmers. My friend was at masters practice one morning when they showed up where the North Baltimore Aquatics kids are and tested a handful of them. The coach used the opportunity to tell the other kids that next time he wanted them ALL to be fast enough to need to be tested.
Michelle Smith was accused, but never busted at the Olympics…she was found a couple years later to have deliberately tampered with her urine sample during an out of competition test though. Funny thing is that she’s now a lawyer.
Do you really want to know? Seriously, what we see in cycling is not unique to that sport.
It is just more exposed and talked about.
Herbert
The systematic East German doping practices covered more than 10,000 athletes from the early 70s to the late 80s. Some of them were as young as 10 years old when they were told to start taking what their coaches told them were special vitamins. The documentation that was revealed when the Wall came down is extensive and damning, but for all that, neither FINA nor the IOC will remove the names of the dopers from the medal lists.
And a lot of the girls went on to have very severe health problems from the drugs they unknowingly ingested or were coerced to ingest.
The people who coached in the old East German are treated as persona non grata in most of the swim world. When the Chinese hired one of those coaches in preparation for Beijing, it was assumed by everyone else in the swim community that they were planning a new doping program, the presumed taint is so bad.
The Chinese had a suspicously good run in the mid-80s with their women’s team while their men’s team struggled. That run ended in 1998 when Australian customs agents seized HgH in the baggage of a Chinese swimmer headed to Perth for that year’s world championships.
The Russians have had a couple of drug positives this year, with Anastasia Ivaneko probably the biggest name. Odd thing is that she tested positive for a steroid that’s been pretty detectable for something like 10+ years.
It’s not a 100% clean sport, but I feel like it is significantly cleaner than cycling or track have been since 2000.
oh, I have no illusions that the sport is clean - I just couldn’t recall any examples offhand. I was more trying to understand if it (doping) was rampant, and what kind of controls are used.
Thorpe had elevated levels of LDH(i think) but it was brushed off as stress related or something.
I think that about half the US swim team at the Atlanta Olympics were diagnosed with asthma. Now, I know that asthma is more prevalent that it used to be. I know that some doctors have kids with asthma swim because it’s better for them than other sports. But, it still seems like a really high percentage, and I know that all of my five year old’s asthma drugs are on the banned list. This doesn’t prove anything, but it makes you wonder.
For all that swimming gets encouraged for asthmatic kids, there have been a couple of studies in the past couple of years about how extended exposure to pool chlorine can actually cause asthma in individuals who otherwise wouldn’t get it.
http://swimming.about.com/od/allergyandasthma/a/cl_pool_problem.htm
Amy van Dyken…
I guess they would know since they shared a locker room?
Dave
Jill,
Isn’t it a good thing that all American swimmers are clean. 
Herbert
There are definitely a couple of current female American swimmers that are the subject of much speculation in that regard.
Ousamma Mellouli tun WC champ got caught for drugs and Anatoliy Poliakov, Ryssland got caught for steroids this year…
I think a couple of girls got caught as well
Every sport has dopingscandals
She used whiskey to mask her urine sample. Here’s a good rundown of her:
Last to first: Irish swimmer Michelle Smith
Irish eyes were smiling during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Michelle Smith was the pride of Ireland after winning three gold and one bronze medal in the pool.
No one else was smiling. Her rise to the top of the swimming world was extremely suspicious.
In two previous Olympic Games, Smith’s best result was 17th in the 200-metre backstroke.
In 1993, she was ranked 90th in the world in the 400 individual medley, but after training with husband Erik de Bruin – a former Dutch discus thrower who was under a four-year suspension for failing a drug test – she vaulted into 17th in the world by the next year.
By Atlanta, the 26-year-old Smith had won several European titles and trimmed a whopping 17 seconds off two personal bests.
After her Olympic success, it was discovered that FINA, swimming’s international federation, had repeatedly expressed concern that Smith was unavailable for out-of-competition drug tests from 1995 onward.
Finally, in 1998, two drug testers showed up at Smith and de Bruin’s home.
Smith gave them a sample, but because she was wearing a bulky sweater, the tester couldn’t see what she was doing. The sample was sealed and sent to a Barcelona lab for examination. The results were shocking. The sample contained a level of alcohol that would be fatal if consumed by a human.
FINA concluded that the sample had been manipulated, that whiskey had been added as a masking agent and they suspended Smith for four years.
Those athletes who finished behind Smith in 1996 – including Canadians Marianne Limpert (silver) and Joanne Malar (fourth) in the 200IM – can only wonder what might have been.