BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : Earlier, U.S. Opposed Testing Record-Setters

Seven days before several American swimmers and coaches called for sweeping changes in Olympic drug testing, the United States had been the only nation to speak against a proposal to automatically test any swimmer who sets a world record, an international official said here Tuesday.

Ross Wales, secretary for FINA, the international swimming federation, said that an amendment proposing that all world record-setters be tested was put before the FINA congress here last Wednesday.

“The only country that spoke out against the proposal was the United States,” Wales said.

Bill Maxson, the president of U.S. Swimming, was the delegate who spoke out.

The amendment was then defeated by a vote of the FINA membership, which is made up of two delegates from each member nation.

U.S. swimmers and women’s Coach Mark Schubert harshly criticized FINA’s drug-testing policy after China’s Zhuang Yong won the 100-meter freestyle Sunday night and was not drug-tested. FINA’s policy is to test two of the first four finishers, at random, and one of the second four finishers. Schubert called for the first-, second- and third-place finishers to be tested, and 100-meter silver medalist Jenny Thompson said that all gold medalists should be tested.

Such a proposal was not brought before the FINA congress last week. The congress does not meet again until 1994, at the World Championships in Rome.

“Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, our rules are changed only every two or four years,” said Wales, who also said that there has not been a positive test at an international meet since 1978.

FINA also declined, at a meeting this week, to strip all former East German women’s swimmers of their gold medals and to remove their records from the books.

Despite documents obtained from former East German coaches detailing the use of performance-enchancing drugs such as anabolic steroids, FINA determined that there was not enough specific evidence to act.

“There is a document which was made available to us,” Wales said. “And it was apparent that the system (of administering steroids) was rampant. But we didn’t really have any facts, specific facts and specific races. With the state of the evidence, it was decided that we’ll just forget it.”

Harm Beyer, director of doping affairs for the German swimming federation, provided a special FINA commission with an extensive report on drug use in East Germany. Beyer said that many of the more specific documents were destroyed when the former German Democratic Republic collapsed.

“Many documents were burned or destroyed,” he said.

He also said that many of the East German records will ultimately be broken, and therefore do not need to be removed.

Tuesday night here, a six-year-old East German record in the women’s 400-meter freestyle relay was broken by a team from the United States.