The Mexican Olympic Committee is denying allegations by the Mexican Swimming Federation that FINA approved a list of false entry times for the 2015 FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia.
In a recent statement the COM (Mexican Olympic Committee) stated that they spoke to FINA and FINA did not approve the entry times. In a statement released by the Mexican Swimming Federation prior to the MOC’s they admitted to making up entry times in order to benefit their swimmers, however they claimed that the entries were accepted by FINA.
President of the COM, Carlos Padilla, said that he doesn’t think FINA will dish out a severe punishment to Mexico, but the possibility is there for Mexico to be pulled from the swimming portion of the 2016 Olympic Games. Padilla says he hopes that this doesn’t happen.
The Mexican Swimming Federation entered multiple swimmers into the World Championships with false times that were within 0.15 seconds of either the FINA “A” or FINA “B” qualifying times in order to sent a larger contingent to the meet.
The majority of the times submitted by the federation were unverifiable with no trace of the athletes ever achieving those times.
Mexican swimmers themselves say that they were unaware that the federation was entering false times. Daniel Ramirez who’s a member of the Mexican worlds roster said that he had never swam the times that were entered for him.
According to a statement submitted on behalf of all Mexican swimmers by Mauro Castillo, the Mexican swimmers didn’t know what they were even swimming at the meet until they got there. Both Castillo and the Mexican swimming federation released separate statements regarding the issues.
FINA has still not responded to a request asking for an explanation of why the times were accepted, or if there will be any reprecussions.
Now this whole story was very good journalism. I can’t believe there isn’t a bigger penalty. Feel bad for those swimmers, though.
Falsify times is not new. I would think on the world scene there would be enough checks and balances that this would have been caught before competition.
One of the advantages the USA Swimming has is the SWIMS database. Times can be proved.