U.S. Swim Team High and Dry for Failing to Name Alternates

Olympic swimmer Tara Kirk

Swimmer Tara Kirk may not be going to the Olympics because the U.S. swim team failed to name alternates.

by Christine Brennan

While Chinese Olympic officials are grabbing headlines by jamming the Internet access of journalists, the U.S. national governing body of what is likely to be the most newsworthy sport at the Olympics just might be depriving three swimmers of their rightful place in Beijing.

This didn't start out as the fault of USA Swimming. The positive drug test of Jessica Hardy was unexpected, to be sure. But as her story has unfolded, and as she fights to keep her spot in three Olympic events, it has become clear that through a serious lack of anticipation, if not downright stubbornness, swimming officials have failed their own athletes.

If Hardy loses her appeal, she will be replaced not by the people who deserve to fill in for her — those who finished immediately behind her in the trials — but others who already are on the team, only in other events.

What's worse, it appears that USA Swimming officials knew they had a positive drug test the day of the deadline to submit their Olympic roster, but still did not move to name those behind Hardy as alternates, just in case.

"The minute the news broke, they needed to make that phone call," said Tara Kirk, who missed making the team in the 100 breaststroke by one-hundredth of a second. "I think the three of us (Lara Jackson in the 50 freestyle and Amanda Weir in the 4x100 freestyle relay are the others) deserved better than this. It is clear that many of the other (national governing bodies) were prepared for situations when some of their athletes might not be able to compete, but not swimming."

USA Gymnastics took about a minute to replace injured superstar Paul Hamm with an alternate waiting in the wings. Little more than a week earlier, U.S. Soccer did the same for its injured star, Abby Wambach. If track and field — the Olympic sport that selects its team most like swimming — lost one of its top athletes after the trials, the one who was next in line in qualifying would replace the injured athlete, pronto.

But swimming? The biggest thing these governing bodies do every four years is select an Olympic team. But unless Hardy is exonerated and makes it to Beijing, USA Swimming just botched that one.

Executive director Chuck Wielgus said his organization was just following its rules, but it's incomprehensible that a sport that gave us the East Germans, a swimming nation built on steroids — not to mention the occasional U.S. positive test — could not anticipate that it might lose someone between the trials and the Games. And if not a failed drug test, how about an injury?

Kirk, 26, a 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the medley relay, thought her worst nightmare occurred at the trials in Omaha, when she finished third by the slimmest of margins, just missing the Olympic team. But as she wrote in a recent blog, that was only the beginning.

"People I trusted to do their jobs and to ensure the working order of the system we put in place for our sport failed me," she said.

Kirk and the others are weighing their options, including the possibility of a lawsuit. "I don't want this to happen to somebody else," Kirk said. While Wielgus promises "an evaluation of our selection procedures" after the Olympics, the silence from the U.S. Olympic Committee has been deafening.

Is it too much to ask for someone in a position of authority to look out for the athletes they are supposed to serve?

About Swimmer Tara Kirk: 

Tara Kirk was born on July 12, 1982 in Bremerton, Washington. She is 26 years old.

As a child, she was most serious about gymnastics. After she had taken a fall off of the uneven parallel bars and broke her arm, she started swimming as part of her rehab after the cast was removed, as she suffered nerve damage and her arm had shrunk, and she could not move her hand. She eventually excelled in swimming and the rest is history.

She attended Bremerton High School and graduated in 2000. She went on to Stanford University, where she set the world record in the 100 meter breaststroke at the Women’s NCAA Championships in 2004. She graduated in 2005 and received her Bachelor’s in Human Biology and her Master’s in Anthropological Sciences.

She was a silver medalist at the 2004 Summer Olympics, having won at the preliminary heats of the 400 Medley Relay. She placed 6th in the 100m breaststroke.

Sources:  USA Today, Tara Kirk's blog, Rightfielders blog, FigureRX Magazine