Team GB swimmer Luke Greenback today questioned whether he was racing against ‘clean’ swimmers in the 200m Olympic backstroke final after winning bronze behind Russian Evgeny Rylov.
The 23-year-old admitted it was ‘frustrating’ that the Russian Olympic Committee athletes were competing at Tokyo 2020 despite the country being banned over their state-sponsored doping programme.
Silver medallist Ryan Murphy was first to raise concerns about the event having finished behind Rylov, who completed a 100m and 200m backstroke double with an Olympic record.
Greenbank was asked if he agreed with comments made by US swimmer Ryan Murphy who came in second. He replied: "It’s obviously a very difficult situation not knowing whether who you are racing against is clean.
"It is something that is part of sports and the board needs to tackle that. It’s a frustrating situation. I just need to keep my mind on the race and control what I can control.
"I can’t really speak on Ryan’s behalf. Obviously, there’s a lot of media around the Russian federation coming into the Olympics.
"Obviously it’s frustrating seeing that as an athlete, having known that there is a state-sponsored doping programme going on and more could be done to tackle that."
In an extraordinary press conference where all three medallists were sat together, Rylov was then asked outright if he doped.
The 24-year-old replied: "I have always been for clean competition. I am always tested. I will fill out all of the forms.
"From the bottom of my heart, I am for clean sport. I am devoting my whole life to this sport. I don’t even know how to react to that.
"Ryan has all the right to think the way he does and to say whatever he says. This is today and here that we live. We don’t live in the past, we don’t live in the future.
"The time will tell. He did not accuse me of anything, that is why I don’t have anything against him because he didn’t put up forth anything against me directly.
Rylov clocked 1min 53.27sec to touch out Murphy by just 0.88sec, with Greenbank finishing in a time of 1:54.72 in a repeat of the result at the World Championships in 2019.
Questioned immediately after the race if he thought the race was clean, Murphy replied: ‘I’ve got about 15 thoughts. Thirteen of them would get me into a lot of trouble.
"It is a huge mental drain on me to go throughout the year thinking that I’m swimming in a race that’s probably not clean, and that is what it is.
"The people that know a lot more about the situation made the decision they did. It frustrates me, but I have to swim the field that’s next to me.
"I don’t have the bandwidth to train for the Olympics at a very high level and try to lobby the people who are making the decisions that they’re making the wrong decisions."
Following it up in his press conference, Murphy added: ‘To be clear, my intention is not to make any accusations here.
"At the end of the day, I do believe there is doping in swimming. I think FINA needs to be more transparent both on the financial side and the drug taking side.
"There’s people that know a lot more about this situation than I do. I’m training to be the absolutely best athlete I can be. So I don’t have time to get involved in this situation.
"But there is a situation and that’s a problem. I’m sorry that there is a situation but I don’t know enough about it to give a 100 per cent certain answer."
The decision to permit around 330 Russian athletes to compete in Tokyo — albeit without the Russian flag present and under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee — was controversial ahead of the Tokyo Games.
That decision came following a ruling late last year by the Court for Arbitration of Sport that partially upheld Russia’s appeal of sanctions handed down by the World Anti-Doping Agency in the wake of the latest Russian doping scandal.
“It is what it is,” WADA President Witold Banka said of the CAS ruling on Russia’s appeal and the resulting reduction of sanctions. “In that case, we were the prosecutors and not the judge.
"I can assure you that we will monitor the situation very closely. They will need to follow the rules.”
