ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how anti-doping policy puts swimmers at risk of inadvertent anti-doping rule violations (ADRV). Swimming first featured in the modern Olympic Games in 1896 and has been in every Olympics since. Swimming was similar to many other elite level sports in not being immune to issues of drug use. During the cold war period of sports in the 1970s and 1980s, there were tensions between swimming coaches in the United States of America, Australia and Japan on the one side and Federation Internationale de Natation on the other. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was formed in 1999 with the purpose of creating a separate, independent administrative agency to spearhead efforts for the anti-doping movement. The strict liability legal paradigm that WADA operates, where ignorance is not a defence, means that swimmers dealing with health problems are at risk of inadvertent ADRV.
