On Sunday, early morning in Germany, the Melbourne Herald Sun posted a cheerful medal table online.

Cheerful for the Australians.

First China, Second USA, Third Japan and so on.

Eleventh place, that's the gag, behind a swimmer symbol is: Emma McKeon, four gold medals, three bronze medals.

Twelfth place: Germany, three gold medals at this point in time.

No Ian Thorpe, no Dawn Fraser, no Australian at all has been more successful at the Olympics than the 27-year-old swimmer from Wollongong.

An exception. But, and that is a problem for the German Swimming Association, not only early on Sunday morning, it is not the only exception in swimming, by far not. The Australians, even more so the Americans, have dominated for decades. Caeleb Dressel, five gold medals, swims in every race against the comparison with Michael Phelps.

Other nations have caught up: the British and the Chinese in particular.

The Germans by and large, however, do not.

The two bronze medals of the Magdeburg long-distance pair Sarah Köhler and Florian Wellbrock are the first in 13 years in an Olympic pool for the DSV.

That shows how entrenched the crisis is.

Eight DSV swimmers reached the finals, as many as in London 2012, one more than five years ago in Rio.

But three races were held in Tokyo that hadn’t existed before, and Koehler and Wellbrock took advantage of their additional chances.

Autumn could be restless

National coach Bernd Berkhahn nevertheless rightly spoke of "very positive approaches" on Sunday.

The performances of 19-year-old Isabel Gose and Lukas Märtens, 21-year-old Lucas Matzerath and Henning Mühlleitners, who finished fourth over 400 meters at 24, allow this.

But there are only approaches.

It will be crucial to promote, nurture and nurture these approaches in the near future.

The prerequisites for this are not good.

The DSV has been in considerable turmoil since the Presidium, in office for nine months, put sports director Kurschilgen in front of the door in the spring.

The unrest, said Berkhahn, cost coaches and athletes time and energy, the perspective is "difficult", "all of this is not happy".

Autumn could be restless.

But there is still a shadow hanging over the swim that extends much further.

In athletics, the Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare was pulled out of the competition between the intermediate and semi-finals by the Integrity Unit, an outsourced investigative unit used by the World Athletics Association in response to the Russian fraud methods.

What does it say about swimming if the national coach is not familiar with the concept?

What if, in Tokyo as in Rio, Americans, the swimming nation with the greatest number of exceptions, address the problem?

And what if Bernd Berkhahn has nothing left but to hope that it will “be fair”, but “secretly” to “know that it is not always the case”?

It means that the cheerful images from Tokyo cannot be trusted.

And that nobody can be seen to change that.