Speaking on The Phil Davis Podcast this week, 22-year-old Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers expressed his lack of trust in nearly half of his fellow elite competitors due to doping.
“There’s a lot of doping that goes on everywhere in swimming,” said the South Australian. “You know it’s going on.
“For me, I just want to beat anyone on any given day,” he said. “I don’t care what my competitors have in their system, I still want to be better than them.”
Chalmers introduced himself to the world when he took 100m freestyle gold at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio at just 18 years of age. Since then, the Marion swimmer has continued to dominate the freestyle sprint scene, racking up medals at domestic competitions, Commonwealth Games and World Championships.
He most recently gave American dynamo Caeleb Dressel a run for his money at the 2019 FINA World Aquatic Championships, where Dressel nabbed 100m free gold in 46.96, a new American Record, while Chalmers snagged silver in 47.08. Chalmers’ effort represented a huge lifetime best, making him the 3rd fastest Australian all-time.
In terms of doping, Chalmers told Davis, “I know we as an Australian swim team are so obviously against it — look at Shayna Jack, she failed a drug test this year and she got a four-year ban just because we hate drug cheats in Australia.”
You can read the latest on the Shayna Jack case here.
Additional discussion points within the podcast include Chalmers’ insight into male sprinters in the swimming world, including death stares, slaps and spitting.
“It’s always ‘who’s strutting around with their chest out the biggest?’.
“I’m not like that at all, I’m quite reserved. I sit up the back of the marshalling room. I might do a bit of slapping out on the pool deck, but I have complete confidence in myself and my abilities so I find most of those things as unnecessary and kind of funny.”
You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here.
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Obviously Americans are so against Chalmers’s comments because we Americans dope the most
You are being downvoted for expressing legit concerns about the integrity of USA swimmers… Take it as a badge of honor… There are plenty of sketchy coaches that are famous in our sport in the USA, but the athletes would rather change teams than out the coaches thanks to the risk for self incrimination. Coaches with high athlete turnover should be automatic targets for extremely aggressive oversight.
“half of all competitors” seems like a little too much. There could easily be a lot of swimmers doping but I don’t feel certain about that many swimmers doping, because swimmers get drug tested often, but I’m not sure how many swimmers actually get drug tested and how often. Still, good point that more swimmers could be doping that we are aware of. It’s definitely very wrong and unfair.
This one line in regards to doping is taken from a 42 min interview and unfortunately on its own does not reflect the true honesty and emotion shown throughout the whole of the interview. Kyle was asked the question in regards to doping in his sport and brushed it off with a comment on how his preference is to concentrate on himself rather then mull over what could have, should have or would have. A truly commendable answer from someone so young and to have the foresight to stay in his own lane when asked about such a controversial topic shows what a great sportsman he is. There was no finger pointing here…. just a true champion talking about his… Read more »
Not a weak take
Still… name names otherwise is just noise.
So is he assuming or does he actually know something. Because if he does know something shouldn’t he speak up?
Honestly? I think all of this stuff is just virtue signaling. It’s now very en vogue to call out dopers, even if you can’t decide exactly who they are.
I’m sure there are many doping we haven’t caught. But, this still sounds like sour grapes to me.
Reminds me of this thread, where Michael Jamieson vilified one doper while celebrating another:
https://twitter.com/mj88live/status/1251853692409700355
Sour grapes from Kyle? You’d be incorrect . Only Dressel has beaten him in his favoured event and only once. He knows Dressel isn’t doping we assume . So there is no need for sour grapes . It was small part of a 45 minute interview .
Exactly, the only swimmer to beat him in his pet event is Dressel & you saw at the WCs last year the huge mutual respect they had for each other. He even mentions in the article about the ‘HE MAN’ ‘strutting their chest’ attitude of some 100 free swimmers, but you don’t see that with Chalmers or Dressel, they do their strutting in the pool.
Name names or it’s just talk.
Oh yeah!!
Love the idea but without hard evidence it might open him up to litigation. Not sure how that all works internationally, though.
The general risk with libel/slander is that if there’s a chance of it being viewed in the UK (which I can confirm, has happened) it opens you up to the massive damages awarded for those types of cases here. You see a lot of “foothold” cases in London where a website has been viewed a few times here but the claimant’s primary concern is actually publication in a different jurisdiction and they just want to use the threat to bring the article down.
Also, he might simply be referring to a feeling he has about the acceptability of doping amongst some elites. Pro cyclists in the 2000s probably couldn’t give you a guaranteed list of certain dopers, but they… Read more »
Cycling had a long history with doping which swimming doesn’t exactly have though. In the past, when there have been dopers in swimming (East German women in the 70’s, Chinese swimmers in the 90’s, Russian swimmers/Sun Yang recently), the sport has done a pretty good job of shutting them out, at least from the accepted mainstream if not the competitions themselves. That’s what lead to the protests against Sun Yang on the podium.
Oh man, let’s see what comes from this.