Timing manipulation in swimming continues – What is the solution?

In a video posted through his personal Instagram account, Likith was seen describing how the officials manipulated the timings of the swimmers to award Olympic A cut timings to the Uzbek swimmers.

He further alleged that the officials and authorities present during the event tried to bribe him to keep shut about the incident, which he denied.

While neither Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) nor Swimming Federation of India (SFI) has made any statement regarding the same, this is surely not the first time that such allegations have been made by an Indian swimmer.

Back in November 2019, a swimmer who has represented India at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games – Anshul Kothari, had posted videos of alleged cheating at the All India Inter-University Swimming meet held at the Lovely Professional University (LPU), Jalandhar.

Kothari alleged that the officials had indulged in 'blatant cheating' to hand the gold medal to the swimmer from the host University and had requested an investigation about the same.

Even then, Likith had retweeted the video posted by Kothari and had accused the officials of supporting early starts and false time recordings.

What is the solution?

Timing manipulation is not a new issue in sports, especially at the grassroots levels. These kinds of things happen day in and day out and yet go either unnoticed or unreported most of the time. But, such fraud happening at national and international level competitions is certainly a very big worry. The only solution to prevent such manipulations from happening in the future is strict scrutiny.

FINA and the national associations need to up their game in investigating such allegations and have to hand out stringent punishments if the spirit of swimming is to be upheld.