Cameron van der Burgh, one of South Africa’s Olympic stars, has admitted to using illegal dolphin kicks to gain an advantage and ultimately win the 100m breaststroke final at the Olympics in London several days ago. Despite the transgression, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) are unable to sanction him as the admission came five days after the event.

FINA’s hands are tied as there is no way to review a result five days after the event, unless an athlete was doping. Underwater footage clearly shows van der Burgh completing more than one dolphin kick at the start of the race, swimmers are only allowed a single dolphin kick on starts and turns. However, he claims that it’s a common transgression and has become a necessary one if swimmers want to remain competitive.

I think every single swimmer does that. At the point of time before the fly kick was legal, (Kosuke) Kitajima was doing it and the Americans were complaining.

It’s got to the point where if you’re not doing it you are falling behind or giving yourself a disadvantage. Everyone is pushing the rules and pushing the boundaries and if you’re not doing it you are not trying hard enough.

Van der Burgh went on to say that he knew it was morally wrong, but that the rule was never properly enforced and therefore swimmers would continue to take the chance.

For instance, I lost my 50 breaststroke (world title) last year because a Brazilian swimmer (Felipe Franca da Silva) did the fly kicks and beat me, and I think only if you can bring in underwater footage, that’s when people will stop doing it. We will have peace of mind to say I don’t need to do it because not everyone else is doing it and it’s fair.

Everybody does it, well, if not everybody, 99 per cent of them. If you’re not doing it you are falling behind and giving yourself a disadvantage.

For me, it’s not obviously, shall we say, the moral thing to do, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my personal performance and four years of hard work for someone else who is willing to do it and get away with it, and has proven to get away with it, as they did last year.

Underwater footage was used to assist the pool referee two years ago in Stockholm and it put an instant stop to the problem.

“It was really awesome because nobody attempted it and it was the first time it was really clean,” van der Burgh said.

“We all came up clean and we all had peace of mind that nobody was going to try it. I’m really for it if they can bring it in, I’m all for it, it will better the sport, but like I say, I’m not willing to lose to someone who is doing it, who has done it to me before.”

Over the past few years, and definitely since the 2004 Olympics in Athens, there have been several calls for underwater footage to be introduced, but to date nothing has been done.

[Source: The Australian, Yahoo]