Likith alleges 'manipulation' of timings at Uzbekistan swim meet

Indian swimmer Likith SP on Wednesday charged that the timings during the recently concluded Uzbekistan Open Championships were “manipulated” to benefit the local swimmers.

“It was quite heart-breaking to see manipulation of timings in favour of a few Uzbekistan swimmers which also resulted in wrong times being recorded for the Indian swimmers,” he said in a YouTube video while asking FINA, the world body, to launch an investigation and take action against those involved in this practice.

Likith won silver medals in the 50m and 100m breaststroke in the Tashkent event held between April 13-17.

In the video, he pointed out the 100m freestyle heats, which was the first event on the first day, and the 100m butterfly heats on the final day as suspect. The display board did not record the time in both events.

“In the 100m butterfly heats, Sajan Prakash finished first in the heats with a time of 54 seconds. We checked the time manually,” he said.

The results had Aleksey Tarasenko at the first spot with a time of 52.02 and Sajan 52.74. Indian swimmer, D Adithya was credited 53.45 seconds, making the ‘B’ Standard for Olympic qualification.

“The times of top 8 swimmers were manipulated,” Selvaraj alleged.

The 22-year-old did not participate in the 200m breaststroke final on the last day in protest. Although he went to the starting block, he did not jump into the pool, but waited till “two minutes and five seconds”, before jumping in and touching the pad.

“I touched the touchpad and stopped my own time, asked the officials if it was the new world record to show them that what they were doing was wrong,” he said adding that the officials followed him and offered him bribe to buy his silence while citing the ‘politics’ behind the scenes.

He also claimed that the organisers later came asking him to give a letter stating that he is mentally unstable and deaf.

Meanwhile, the Swimming Federation of India confirmed that there were errors in the timing in the heats for Indian swimmers, but were rectified for the startlist of the finals.

“Heats timings were a problem, the display was not working,” said Monal Chokshi, secretary of SFI. “Timing they published were faster times. So our coaches brought it to the organisers attention. They corrected that for the final startlist. (It happened in the) 100 freestyle and 100 butterfly. Final startlist timings and results were fine. Our Coaches got it corrected, for the Indian swimmers that is,” he said.