Craig Lord is a British journalist whose opinions I respect enormously. He has taken the lead in many major issues affecting swimming. Drugs, financial mismanagement and shiny swimsuits are three examples. He also understood that the criticism of Lauren Boyle’s 1500m world record swim was never about Boyle or the swim but was aimed at Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) lying about the legality of the Kilbirnie Pool. Occasionally I have disagreed with him – shiny swimsuits for example. In every case I have been proven wrong. Such is life.

This week Craig Lord has come out strongly about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the Swim-vortex Facebook page he said this.

“FINA’s desertion of Russia is more significant than most others because it has long been accused of sucking up to the sports-mad Russian dictator. FINA’s incestuous relationship with Russia has been an open secret for years with human rights groups accusing FINA of helping legitimise Putin’s authoritarian leadership through ‘sportswashing.

In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and Russia was busted for state-sponsored doping that had links to the Kremlin, FINA awarded Putin its highest individual honour.
It was FINA’s way of thanking him for footing the bill for the 2015 world championships but it didn’t end there, with Russia subsequently handed a stream of world championships in the years since.

Swimming insiders now expect that traditional swimming countries, including Australia, will now be awarded major events they deserve to host with Russia likely to be blackbanned for years.”

On this issue, I agree with Craig Lord. Putin is a dangerous bugger. Any sanction that might bring him into line is well and truly justified. Without qualification Russia should be banished from the sporting world. While Russia continues its invasion, no Russian athlete should compete anywhere in anything. That includes World tennis number one Daniil Medvedev, World swimming number six Evgeny Rylov, World number one high jumper Mariya Lasitskene, the Russian football team from the World Cup and teen skater Kamila Valieva. Only if you banish Russia’s best will there be the slightest chance of reform.

Having said that I have some sympathy for the sentiment expressed by the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations. He said, “With its history of aggressions against other countries, the United States was in no position to moralize.”

It is hard to argue with that. In my lifetime the United States has invaded Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The US killed 2,000,000 civilians in Vietnam, 71,000 civilians in Afghanistan and 208,000 civilians in the Iraq war. That is a total of 2,279,000 civilians murdered by the Americans invading other people’s countries.

It is early days in Ukraine, but so far civilian deaths are reported as 352 or 0.015% of the American wartime slaughter rate. In fact, 352 is less people killed in Ukraine than are murdered on the streets of US cities every week. So why aren’t we calling for a ban on Caleb Dressel, or Katie Ledecky or Serena Williams, or Simone Biles, or Tiger Woods, or Allyson Felix, or Athing Mu. Afterall their country has killed 6,474 times more people in three invasions than Russia has so far.

The West also ignored the American decision to steal $7billion of Afghan reserves. Afghans are starving while Americans drive around in Cadillacs bought with stolen Afghan money. And through it all sporting organisations and commentators said nothing.    

And so, while I understand and support the outrage in the West at Russia’s action in Ukraine, I would dearly love to hear an explanation of why the world beats its breast over Russia while the Americans get off Scot free. Is it Western prejudice, are we all running scared of the Americans, why are the standards we set for the Americans so different?

I also have some sympathy for the paranoia Russians show towards protecting their European borders. It is not so long ago that 27,000,000 Russians were killed because of an invasion from the west. That does not justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but it should be a relevant factor in the West’s diplomacy before it gets to where we are now.

“Let him who is without sin amongst you caste the first stone”. I’m not against the stones we are casting at Russia just now. In fact, I agree with Craig Lord, the stones should be bigger and more severe. But please explain why the Americans have done so much worse and we have turned a blind eye. Why the double standard?