Nobody wants to hear that.

But on Friday there was a scandal after swimming.

The American Ryan Murphy said after the competition over 200 meters back of a "probably not clean race".

This was not a direct reproach of the silver medalist to the Olympic champion Yevgeny Rylow.

Murphy didn't give a name.

But nobody can deny that his gaze fell on the winner, on his origins.

Russia is known for a systematic doping system organized with the help of the state, which was exposed in 2015.

Built to prepare athletes of the most important sports for victories for the good of the country.

But Murphy has no evidence against Rylow in his hands.

And that's why a terrible picture emerged just at the moment when there was something to be celebrated.

The one about the poisoning of sport.

Because depending on the perspective in the swimmer camp, there are now two losers among the medal winners to complain about: Rylow will remain suspected of being a fraudster.

Murphy will label them as bad losers, as nest polluters.

If only he would have been silent! Every devastating story of a bitter Olympic moment has a lead-in. No one who listened to Murphy, who followed his explanation, could deny that he had serious intentions to point out some formidable, destructive problem. There was a deep despair in his words. The realization that he has invested years of his life in a wonderful idea that, from his point of view, turns out to be a chimera: to swim in a clean competition with like-minded people for the most important award on earth.

The accusation appears naive and - in a certain sense this is paradoxical - unfair at the same time. Because doping is not a fresh discovery, but an integral part of the games. During follow-up tests in London in 2012 and Beijing in 2008, around 150 athletes were exposed, demoted and banned. Murphy knew what he was saying. And that is why it would be callous to examine his complaint from a legal perspective alone and to dismiss it with contempt. It would be more important to ask why, in a faint anger, he said what threatens to tear him apart.

The answer is obvious: the end of a false hope.

Sports associations such as the international swimming federation FINA have been promising to get doping under control for decades.

It shows a certain dishonesty to formulate this unrealizable claim.

In addition, organized sport regularly undermined its own resolutions in reality.

Sometimes a network of heinous manipulations was hidden behind an anti-doping certificate.

In Russia at least between 2010 and 2016, for example, in the approach of a systematic, criminal extent, as the GDR used for at least two decades.

Nevertheless, there has never been an appropriate sanction.

The World Anti-Doping Agency banned the Russians in 2019 because of the continued concealment of their suspended manipulation system. But only in name. Although it is still not certain who was still part of the large circle of bottled and whipped up, 323 Russians started as the Russian Olympic Committee. They wear neutral jerseys and instead of their hymn listen to Tchaikovsky's piano concerto number 1. Who understands that? And who does not understand that Murphy needs more confidence in the cleanliness of his sport in order to be able to believe in the value of the Olympics. His distrust is a shame for which others are responsible.