USA Swimming Passes Legislation To Strengthen SafeSport, Punish Doping

USA Swimming’s House of Delegates approved 27 new pieces of legislation to improve the organization’s SafeSport program and help further restrict anti-doping violators.

The national federation for swimming in the United States, USA Swimming announced its new legislation and the start of terms for four elected officers of the Board of Directors. All of the changes came out of the House of Delegates meeting at the United States Aquatic Sports Convention in Kansas City, Missouri.

One of the major changes is to officially deny deck access at meets to any swimmer or coach who has had their USA Swimming membership suspended for violating USA Swimming’s Code of Conduct.

This is essentially closing a loophole that has cropped up here and there over the years. In 2013, we reported on a banned individual who still got deck access at the Mesa Pro Swim Series (then called the Mesa Grand Prix) as a vendor, when the person would have been banned from the meet as a coach.

USA Swimming’s new rule is aimed at preventing similar situations, with banned coaches, swimmers or other personnel getting on deck at meets for vendor or volunteer jobs, which typically aren’t governed by the USA Swimming banned list.

A few more notable changes:

• USA Swimming members are now prohibited from privately coaching any swimmer suspended for doping.
• Any coach who earned money from USA Swimming in any form based on a swimmer who was caught doping must return the prize money.
• If the Vice President of Program Operations approves a camera for review in a meet, footage from that camera can be used to review stroke or turn infractions called on the deck.
• The chair of the SafeSport program is now required to be a voting member of every LSC’s Board of Directors.

You can read more about the new policies here. USA Swimming says it will have a full list of the adopted legislation on its website in the future.