At the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, one of the most controversial situations ever to happen in swimming happened with multiple disqualifications and days of adjudication before Great Britain and the United States wound up officially being honored as co-champions in the women’s 800-meter free relay.
Initially, Australia touched first, America touched second and Great Britain finished with a bronze medal in what proved to be an exciting relay.
Immediately after the race, the U.S. was disqualified for a fast relay takeover based on the timing system. Then, while Australia and Great Britain were in the media mixed zone being interviewed about their now gold and silver standings, officials disqualified Australia for a celebration infraction as the relay members all jumped into the pool before the final team finished.
Both Australia and the U.S. appealed, but video evidence shot down Australia’s appeal while that same type of evidence ultimately led to the U.S. being given a shared gold medal since the adjudication was not until more than a day later.
Officially, FINA explains the results as follows:
In the Women’s 4×200 m freestyle relay, the Australian team finished first but was disqualified for jumping into the pool in celebration before all teams finished the race. The US team finished second, but was disqualified for improper changeover. This was later blamed on the faulty touchpad. In accordance with the decision of the FINA Bureau (2001, Bangkok): “To avoid any reasonable doubt regarding the result of the Women’s relay 4x200m Freestyle Final of the 9th FINA World Championships in Fukuoka but without unfairly changing the official results of the race, the Bureau decided to grant a second set of gold medals to the USA team.”
Last month, British swim blog Pullbuoy spoke with Karen Pickering, the anchor leg on Great Britain’s winning squad. Pullbuoy produced the following excellent video that demonstrates that Great Britain is still fired up about that shared world championship status, and does an amazing job of detailing the entire controversy.
At the end of the day, Britain were third fastest. They only “won” gold due to technicalities