South African Swimmer Cameron van der Burgh admitted to cheating on the 100-meter breaststroke final in which he won the gold medal.
Van der Burgh told the Sydney Morning Herald that he did more than one allowed dolphin kick at the start of the race.
''If you're not doing it, you're falling behind,'' he stated. ''It's not obviously, shall we say, the moral thing to do, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal performance and four years of hard work for someone that is willing to do it and get away with it.''
Underwater footage clearly indicates that the swimmer utilized three "dolphin kicks" as opposed to the one permitted by rules.
Van Der Burgh then went on to claim that all swimmers do.
Despite his openness, it seems that the International Olympic Committee is not interested in dealing with the issue. According to committee spokesman Mark Adams, the issue may not be one the IOC needs to deal with.
''If we dealt with every allegation as a fact, and every comment as a fact, we would be in a very strange world," he said. "You will know, as well as I do, that very often people are strangely misquoted, so I think in the first instance it is with the federation to take a judgment.''
It is likely that Van Der Burgh gets to keep his gold medal.
Cheating has been popular during these games. British cyclist Phillip Hindes has also admitted to deliberately crashing in order to give his team a better start in the men's team sprint. The crash force a restart in the qualifying round and Britain went on to win gold.
More importantly was the controversial issue of eight badminton players who were caught losing on purpose to draw up better positions in subsequent rounds.
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