Yulia Efimova's return from a controversial 16-month doping ban has found an unlikely supporter.
John Rudd, the coach of Efimova's main rival Ruta Meilutyte, welcomed the Russian's comeback — even though Efimova edged his swimmer for gold in an emotional 100-meter breaststroke race at the world championships this week.
"You know I am (glad)," Rudd said. "Last year was flat as hell. When there's no Efimova in Europe, the breaststroke is a pretty flat thing. ... So in many ways having the big challenger back is a good thing."
Efimova returned in March after testing positive for the banned steroid DHEA. She maintains that she ingested the steroid in a nutritional supplement. The Los Angeles-based swimmer said her English was poor enough that she didn't notice that the banned substance was written on the package of the supplement.
Governing body FINA accepted that Efimova wasn't intending to gain a performance boost and decided not to give her the standard ban of two years, which would have ruled her out of her home worlds.
"She's clearly hungry for the sport and wants to do well," Rudd said. "She has not sat on her thumbs waiting for her ban to finish. ... Although she was banned, she was training."
That was evident by the manner in which Efimova stormed back to overtake Meilutyte, a Lithuanian, in the second lap of Tuesday's race.
"It was a pretty intense final emotionally and maybe I got a little too excited and just didn't finish as well as I was expecting," Meilutyte told reporters in an interview session arranged by her sponsor, Arena. "I guess there was a bit of tension going on between the girls. The crowd was going crazy."
The effect of the crowd inside the Kazan Arena made Meilutyte feel like a villain.
"You have arguably Russia's most prominent swimmer returning from a controversial ban in her home country and in front of her home crowd," said the British coach Rudd, who trains Meilutyte in Plymouth. "That's a pretty big situation for somebody to deal with when you're the other one who can maybe take the medal off her.
"The next time they race it won't be in front of her Russian home crowd," Rudd added, looking ahead to next year's Olympics in Brazil. "Rio will be very different."
Rio will also be very different from the 2012 London Games, when Meilutyte came out of nowhere to win gold in the 100 breast as a 15-year-old, beating the favoured American Rebecca Soni by more than a full second.
As soon as the gold medal was placed around Meilutyte's neck, she became the focus of intense doping speculation. It was similar to the negative attention that China's Ye Shiwen faced after destroying the field in the 400 individual medley at those games.
"There were a lot of people who were very quick in London to say, 'Ye Shiwen, is she clean? Ruta, is she clean?' People jump to conclusions a bit too early sometimes," Rudd said. "And they're clean, aren't they?"
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Andrew Dampf can be followed at www.twitter.com/asdampf
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