SwimVortex is currently petitioning FINA to finally sort out the GDR mess by i) awarding duplicate medals to those women (including Sharron Davies) who were denied them ii) putting asterisks next to the record books for GDR performances (Schneider, Strauss and Mohring all still hold German national records).

I think it's a decent way for FINA to admit they were wrong, while not adding to the misery suffered by the GDR women at the time (and their health problems in subsequent years). However, I think it's probably too little too late for poor old Enith Brigitha - just think what her impact as a gold-medal-winning black woman could have had on the swimming world in 1976? Swimming still needs all the help it can get in terms of diversity and accessibility, and we could have had a 12-year head start...

“I just think he’s in a place where he’s feeling good about swimming,” [Coach Bob] Bowman told AP. “If he chooses to compete, he’s got some time. I like having the ability to do it. To be perfectly honest, he’s not anywhere near being able to compete in a meet or anything like that. We’re just getting started on improving his fitness. We’ll see where that goes.”

For depth of thought on the theme of why, we turn to a work contemplated by Bowman, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No2, which sounds to the tune of resurrection, rebirth and reinvention. The first movement asks “Is there life after death?”; the second is a remembrance of happy times in a life gone by; the third a view of life as meaningless activity; the fourth a wish for release from life without meaning; and the fifth movement ends with a fervent hope for everlasting, transcendent renewal. The kind of stuff someone who may appear to have done it all by his mid-20s might crave as his life stretches out before him.