FINA considers underwater video over 'dolphin' kick row
Source: Agencies |
August 10, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SWIMMING officials are considering the introduction of underwater video for judging following the controversy over an alleged illegal "dolphin" kick by South Africa's Cameron van der Burgh in his Olympic 100-meter breaststroke gold medal win last week.
Olympic rules allow one dolphin kick at the start of a 100-meter breaststroke race. In a dolphin kick, the swimmer's body moves like a wave in the water, resembling the movement of a dolphin. The intensity of the wave created propels the swimmers forward faster underwater than if they were on the surface of the water.
Underwater footage of van der Burgh's start revealed him doing more than the one - some reports said he did three - dolphin kicks. He won in a world record of 48.46 seconds.
Van der Burgh admitted he did the extra kicks but said he was forced to because the rule was not policed properly and illegal kicking had become common. As the fastest qualifier for the Olympic final, van der Burgh swam in lane four, which is lined with numerous television and still cameras that clearly documented the infraction. But the cameras are for TV use only, and the judges cannot look at the images.
"Judges can only judge what they see," Cornel Marculescu, the executive director of swimming governing body FINA, said. "They cannot judge what they don't see."
Illegal dolphin kicks are common in breaststroke events. At the 2004 Athens Games, American backstroker Aaron Peirsol accused Japanese winner Kosuke Kitajima of using a dolphin kick at the start of his race after watching teammate and world record-holder Brendan Hansen finish second.
This time, Hansen took bronze behind Van der Burgh and Christian Sprenger of Australia.
"If you're not doing it, you're falling behind," van der Burgh told the Sydney Morning Herald. "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 that is willing to do it and get away with it."
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