American back swimmer Ryan Murphy told CNBC The News with Shepard Smith that doping is still a huge problem in sport and that not enough is being done to combat it.
“In the US you can see exactly how many times I or one of my teammates have been tested for drugs, and in other countries you don’t,” Murphy said. “We just have no idea what they are doing or not doing in the fight against doping.”
In Tokyo, Murphy won a gold medal in the 4×100 medley relay, a silver medal in the 200m back and a bronze medal in the 100m back, bringing his own Olympic medal count to six.
After Murphy’s silver medal in the men’s 200m backstroke, Murphy took the spotlight on doping concerns when he told reporters, “It’s a huge mental burden for me all year round knowing that I’m swimming in a race that probably isn’t clean.”
Murphy clarified to host Shepard Smith that he “didn’t name a single athlete or country, and that’s how it got included, and that’s a bit of a disappointment.”
Murphy told Smith that he trusts Travis Tygart, CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency, and FINA’s new executive director Brent Nowicki, when it comes to promoting swimming and getting away from doping.
“Travis Tygart has been talking about this for years, he’s someone who deals with this topic every day, and if he’s someone who says races may not be clean, that’s an opinion I listen to, and then too the new manager. ” Director of FINA, this is the umbrella organization for international swimming, he told me to my face that he believes we still have a long way to go to rid our sport of doping, so the two guys are really well versed in this subject “Said Murphy. “You are really motivated to clean up our sport and really motivated to move our sport forward.”
FINA emailed CNBC the following statement:
“Doping is a global problem in sport. It is FINA’s responsibility to do everything in its power to combat this and protect clean athletes. This is why FINA President Husain Al-Musallam has launched doping prevention since he took office two months ago.The FINA has worked closely with the International Testing Agency (ITA) to ensure that their tests outside of competitions for Tokyo 2020 match those for Rio Of course, Tokyo water sports enthusiasts, including all medalists, are regularly tested, but as FINA has made it clear to all of our athletes, we are determined to use more resources and more to our anti-doping practices to strengthen and further strengthen We will continue to do everything we can to ensure a level playing field for our athletes. ”
Tygart emailed the following statement to CNBC:
“The voice of the athletes is an important part of an effective global anti-doping system and we commend athletes like Ryan who have the courage to point out the loopholes in the system that lead us all to question the fairness of international competition work with athletes to give them a real voice at the WADA decision-making table. “
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen this horror movie before – in which Russia’s state-sponsored doping program runs free and Russia wins, while the leaders of IOC and WADA try to blind the world by claiming that Russia is ‘forbidden’ . All can now see this “prohibition” once again for the farce that it is. It is hardly a “rebranding” and will do nothing to stop corruption in Russia and likely encourage others who want to win by any means. That must certainly serve as a further call for a new, honest global anti-doping system that lives by the Olympic values and has the courage to stand up for a fair sport of the games through their thirst for medals over values. ”
Of course, it is not fair to question the performance of an individual athlete and all are considered innocent unless and until proven otherwise. The world, including athletes from Russia, has been let down and deserves better. The leaders and sports authorities in Russia, having escaped the consequences, have abandoned their athletes by committing the original scam that started years ago and continue to cover up that scam. We have called for all tests on individual athletes in all sports to be published from all countries, as our US athlete test results are, but especially Russia given its proven corrupt system. The world deserves to know if anything has really changed in Russia and how many times we may see this fraud again on the world’s greatest stage. ”
The Russian Olympic Committee did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Comments are closed.