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Misuse of prescription drugs, getting drunk, breaching curfews, deceit and bullying highlighted a failure of culture and leadership in the Australian Olympic swimming team.
The long-awaited independent review commissioned by Swimming Australia in the wake of the disappointing 2012 London Games campaign has found there were enough such “toxic incidents” to call for a strong, collective leadership response from coaches, staff and the swimmers.
But no such collective action was forthcoming.
Instead, it says, standards, discipline and accountability for the swim team were too loose.
“Situations were left to bleed with not enough follow through for fear of disrupting preparation for competition,” the report says.
“Although few situations relating to London reported through this review were truly grave in nature, they compounded in significance as no one reigned in control.”
Swimmers interviewed for the report described the Games as the “Lonely Olympics” and the “Individual Olympics”.
There was not much connection between groups of athletes, or between athletes, staff and coaches other than what was engineered reactively.
The report outlines a campaign that got progressively worse as the predicted flow of gold medals failed to eventuate and there was no plan in place to deal with it.
“It seems that morale began to drop once the team started to lose in the first few days.
Athletes reported that there was either praise for a win, or silence.
“People felt the failure very keenly while they were still in the midst of performance. It was a contagious feeling that had a high impact on the mood,” it said.
“Some athletes let their emotion play out as bravado, withdrawal, disinterest and sulking.
“This tension was not nipped in the bud..indeed it was heightened with scuttlebutt and assumptions and diagnoses of doom from the media and the pool deck; things aren’t going well.”
The report said some older athletes saw the storm brewing and attempted to intervene, but without a supported forum these attempts were seen by others as harking back to good old days, or as being negative and criticising.
“Poor behaviour and disrespect within the team were not regulated or resisted strongly by other team members, and it was left unchecked or without consequence by staff and coaches on a number of occasions.
“Some individual incidents of unkindness, peer intimidation, hazing and just bad form as a team member that were escalated to personal coaches were not addressed and had no further consequence.”