Drug-friendly games enticing, but not for me: Chalmers

West Australian

5 hours ago

Kyle Chalmers hopes the drug-friendly Enhanced Games will push World Aquatics to boost prize money for clean swimmers.
Chalmers doesn't begrudge athletes, including compatriot James Magnussen, from competing at the multi-sports event with no drug testing.
"James is one of my really great mates so I'm definitely not going to knock him for going across there," Chalmers said on Sunday.
"That is something that is hard in our sport, there's not a huge amount of money or prize money on offer and we kind of do it for the love of it.
"So I am not going to be a person that slams swimmers for wanting to go across and make some money and give themselves a better opportunity in life or set their families up.
"If they want to make that choice, then good on them ... I don't have any negativity towards that and especially towards James."
Enhanced Games, founded by Melbourne-born entrepreneur Aron D'Souza, is offering $US1 million in prize money for anyone breaking the 50m freestyle world record and other events.
Enhanced Games has already paid that bonus to Greece's four-time Olympian Kristian Gkolomeev for bettering the legal world record of 20.91 seconds set by Brazilian Cesar Cielo in 2009.
Gkolomeev, while on performance-enhancing drugs, clocked 20.89 at a trial in the US last February.
World Aquatics last week passed a by-law giving the global governing body powers to ban anyone who supports Enhanced Games.
But Chalmers hoped Enhanced Games, to also feature athletics and weightlifting when staged in Las Vegas in May, would prompt World Aquatics to increase prize money.
"I really, really hope so," Chalmers said.
"Swimmers have been underpaid for a very long time at the big competitions.
"I have never thought about it a huge amount because you do it for the love of swimming, and I have been well aware my whole career that there's not a lot of money to be made in it.
"But when something like that comes in where there's so much money, I think it would be pretty enticing for quite a lot of athletes.
"I'm very lucky to have a lot of personal sponsors so I do OK for myself, which is nice.
"But I know that there's a lot of swimmers out there that really struggle."
Gkolomeev's million-dollar pay-day came after the Greek said he made only $5000 a year during his clean swim career.
"To make $1 million in one race is incredible," Chalmers said.
"So I really hope that there is a shift, that we are able to get a little bit more prize money for what we do, but I guess we'll see.
"I think it's threatening World Aquatics a little bit."
World Aquatics has urged national federations, including Swimming Australia (SA), to enact their own bans.
"At the moment, Swimming Australia's board is meeting to look at what is the policy that World Aquatics put down, I'll leave that kind of stuff to them," SA's head coach Rohan Taylor said on Sunday.
"For me, I'm just focused on this team and working with these guys and providing the right environment for them for safe sport, clean sport - that's what we're about."