Nigel Si­mon

T&T Olympic bronze medal­list, George Bovell III has joined the list of com­peti­tors who were shock to hear about his for­mer team-mate Brazil­ian Ce­sar Cielo be­ing al­lowed to com­pete at the on­go­ing 14th FI­NA World Long Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship at the Ori­en­tal Sports Cen­tre, Shang­hai, Chi­na.

Cielo, the Olympic and World cham­pi­on test­ed pos­i­tive for dop­ing in May along with three oth­er Brazil­ian team mates, but last week had his ban over­turned, a first for sport which has the whole swim­ming world in an up­roar. The Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) up­held a de­ci­sion by the Brazil­ian swim­ming fed­er­a­tion to im­pose the min­i­mum penal­ty-a warn­ing-af­ter Cielo, the reign­ing world 50m and 100m freestyle cham­pi­on and three of his train­ing part­ners test­ed pos­i­tive for a banned di­uret­ic in May. FI­NA had called for a three-month sus­pen­sion on Cielo, Nicholas dos San­tos and Hen­rique Bar­bosa and had chal­lenged the rul­ing be­cause WA­DA rules al­low a sus­pen­sion of up to two years for a pos­i­tive test for Furosemide, which is on the banned sub­stances lists for its abil­i­ty to help ath­letes shed weight fast and serve as a mask­ing agent for oth­er sub­stances.

Cielo claimed that the di­uret­ic can on­ly have end­ed up his blood stream through cross con­t­a­m­i­na­tion (be­yond his con­trol) of a caf­feine food sup­ple­ment that he us­es reg­u­lar­ly. But the de­ci­sion by CAS has not gone down well with ma­jor­i­ty of the Brazil­ian's ri­val in the sport, ac­cord­ing to the top T&T swim­mer, who up un­til last year trained along­side Cielo be­fore re­turn­ing to T&T to train with long-time coach Anil Roberts. The 27-year-old Bovell III said, "It's the main top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion on the pool deck in Chi­na.

"Many swim­mers are speak­ing out and say­ing that it is not per­son­al but rather that they are tak­ing a stance against dop­ing in sport. Sev­er­al oth­er world-class swim­mers, in­clud­ing Olympic 100m freestyle cham­pi­on Alain Bernard (France), and Com­mon­wealth cham­pi­ons Ge­off Huegill (Aus­tralia) and James God­dard (Great Britain) have al­so called the im­po­si­tion of warn­ing "soft" and "un­be­liev­able." The is­sue rais­es ques­tions over in­con­sis­ten­cy of ap­pli­ca­tion in an­ti-dop­ing rules that ap­pear to be less than fair and on food sup­ple­men­ta­tion in sport in gen­er­al, in­clud­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of prod­ucts. "FI­NA and the CAS have done a great dis­ser­vice to the world of swim­ming and set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent," was the Tweet of Roland Schoe­man, the South African sprint­er on hear­ing the news. FI­NA, it must be not­ed, is bound by the rul­ings of CAS but some be­lieve that it could ex­ert more pres­sure on its mem­ber fed­er­a­tion, Brazil, which has pro­duced a wor­ry­ing­ly high num­ber of pos­i­tives in the past two years.

The Ger­man team, with world No 1 ranked 100m freestyler of 2011 Mar­co di Car­li in the midst, re­act­ed cau­tious­ly, per­for­mance head Lutz Buschkow de­scrib­ing the de­ci­sion as "un­ex­pect­ed" be­fore adding: "Now we must wait for the de­tailed grounds of the CAS judg­ment to be able to un­der­stand con­clu­sions and state­ments." Di Car­li summed up a wide­ly held mood when he said: "It's a big sur­prise. Every­one had as­sumed there would be at least a mild pun­ish­ment. It is a lit­tle ir­ri­tat­ing that...while we do things one way oth­er fed­er­a­tions take dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es. Right now, I have to fo­cus on my­self." While Cielo was cleared to race in Shang­hai, Al­bert Subi­rats, the US-based Venezue­lan, is out for a year through no fault of his own af­ter his fed­er­a­tion failed to lodge his where­abouts pa­pers with an­ti-dop­ing au­thor­i­ties in the out-of-com­pe­ti­tion pro­gramme. FI­NA ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Cor­nel Mar­cules­cu told re­porters that he was not hap­py with the de­ci­sion but added: "I re­spect the de­ci­sion of the CAS. They are the last le­gal re­sort in sports. I'm not sat­is­fied but I think we have done our job." The physi­cian who pre­scribed the caf­feine pills for Cielo tes­ti­fied dur­ing the CAS hear­ing. The na­ture of his tes­ti­mo­ny was not spec­i­fied, pre­scrib­ing a caf­feine prod­uct that does not con­tain furosemide falling shy of ex­plain­ing how the banned sub­stance got there. CAS will de­liv­er the full de­tails of the case some weeks down the line.

For his part, Howard Jakobs, lawyer for Cielo, told the me­dia: "The ar­bi­tra­tors agreed there was no in­tent to cheat and no per­for­mance en­hanc­ing. "They ac­cept­ed the ex­pla­na­tion that the sup­ple­ments were con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. It's good now that the ar­bi­tra­tors can dis­tin­guish from case to case when an ath­lete tries to cheat or not." Then to com­pli­cate things even more Cielo came in and won the men's 50m but­ter­fly on Sun­day amid boo­ing and whistling from the crowd. Cielo (BRA) shrugged off the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing his dop­ing warn­ing to win the dash in 23.10, with Matthew Tar­gett and Ge­off Huegill giv­ing Aus­tralia the rest of the podi­um in 23.28 and 23.35. That locked out French broth­ers-in-law Fred Bous­quet and Lau­rent Man­au­dou, on 23.38 and 23.49 re­spec­tive­ly. Com­mon­wealth cham­pi­on Ja­son Dun­ford of Kenya, sev­enth in 23.60, emerged from the wa­ter and ap­peared to put two thumbs down in a de­lib­er­ate ap­peal to the au­di­ence and re­ceived a loud cheer as he did so. Cielo, off to a fly­ing start in his bid to win triple gold, the de­fence of his 50m and 100m freestyle crowns to come, could not hold back the tears, nei­ther in the wa­ter, nor on deck, nor on podi­um and he, too, re­ceived a loud cheer amid the whistling.

The emo­tions of the past sev­er­al weeks of tur­moil spilling over in al­most un­con­trol­lable fash­ion as the na­tion­al an­them struck up for a na­tion with dou­ble-dig­it pos­i­tives to its name over the past few sea­sons.

A sym­pa­thet­ic voice was heard, too, from the sil­ver medal­list and Cielo's for­mer train­ing part­ner un­der coach Brett Hawke at Auburn. Tar­gett said: "It's dif­fi­cult for him. I'm not go­ing to speak for my friend, but I lived with the guy and I know ex­act­ly what he's go­ing through. At times like this, you find out who your re­al friends are." It might have been wise for Tar­gett to have left it at that in sup­port of his friend but he felt un­able, call­ing Dun­ford a "sore los­er" and adding: "I'm re­al­ly hap­py for him [Cielo]. And if I was ever to get beat­en by any­body I would want it to be a friend." Bovell will face down Cielo to­mor­row night in the 50m freestyle, then again at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Oc­to­ber. Bovell said: "Things here are go­ing smooth­ly. I am fi­nal­ly over the jet lag and feel­ing rest­ed and I am op­ti­mistic about the out­come."