‘WHAT is wrong with the people who run our sport?” The heartfelt plea came from Ross Murdoch via his Twitter page. The Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning swimmer was responding to comments made by Cornel Marculescu, an executive director of Fina, world swimming’s governing body, who seemed to be almost making light of the increasingly persistent problem of doping in his sport.

Fina had made Sun Yang their “man of the meet” at the recent world championships in Kazan, Russia, after he won the 400m and 800m freestyle events, before withdrawing from the 1500m freestyle due to an apparent heart problem. This was despite the Chinese swimmer, who won double Olympic gold in London in 2012, having served a three month ban in secret last year after testing positive for banned stimulant trimetazidine.

When questioned on German television whether it sent the right message to shower accolades on a convicted doper, Marculescu was unrepentant. “You cannot condemn the stars just because they had a minor incident with doping,” he said, as Sun became one of a clutch of swimmers to return from bans to take their place on the medal podium again.

Little wonder, then, that Murdoch, and others like team-mate Michael Jamieson, find the whole issue frustrating. As athletes they can do little to affect who should or should not be allowed to line up alongside them at swimming meets, but they have every right to question why those in charge of the sport are not taking a firmer line.

Murdoch, who won a bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke in Kazan, admits even the idea of doping is anathema to him and believes it is wrong for officials, the media, and the public at large to continue to be in thrall to those who have been previously caught for cheating.

“It’s something I would never do,” he told the Sunday Herald. “It’s a lifestyle thing, the personality of a cheater. I don’t have that and I could almost guarantee that the majority of British athletes these days are not doping as it’s not the British way.

“I think more athletes should make a noise about it. One of these things that people are scared to talk about is doping and a lot of athletes don’t like to speak out against it. But if you just sit quietly and accept that people do it, it will never ever change. There are dopers who get a lot of media attention and are then in the public eye which means they get support. Their behaviour has been condoned even though it is misconduct in sport.

“It’s annoying if people maybe aren’t taking it seriously enough. Doping is obviously a serious offence and you see athletes coming back from serving bans – you see it in athletics all the time – and going on to make world finals. Ultimately, it comes down to the governing bodies. Me as an athlete, I can’t make a change. The governing bodies, the public and the media can help make the biggest change. They still give these athletes support and media attention and I don’t think they deserve that. I could never condone that.”

Murdoch is not sure what the appropriate sanctions should be for anyone caught doping. He believes a distinction should be made between those who have clearly taken performance-enhancing drugs and those who have mistakenly taken something without being fully aware of its contents. But he knows it is becoming an increasingly blurred picture.

“It’s hard to say what the appropriate sanctions should be,” he said. “There have been athletes in the past, for example, the skier Alain Baxter, who took a nasal spray from a different country and it just so happened to have a dose of a banned substance in it. He ended up losing his Winter Olympic medal. So it’s hard to say who’s been doping and who’s just accidentally been contaminated.”

All Murdoch can do for now is continue with his training programme and focus solely on himself, believing any athlete who allows them-selves to get caught up in a web of paranoia will not be able to perform to their best. Murdoch’s next major target is a place in the British team for next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and he will not achieve that, he believes, if he devotes time to worrying about whether he is competing in a clean field.

“It’s a bit frustrating to see, but you’re never going to stop it,” he added. “There are nations out there who completely condone doping and do their very best to hide it. As clean athletes, all we can do is turn up every day and train our hardest. We just have to treat it as if it’s a level playing field. I don’t know who is doing things, and those with a previous history say they’ve stopped or that it was a mistake. You just have to turn up on the day and do your best, regardless of who is in the lane next to you.

“You don’t look around and cringe at people. They’ve made the times set by their national governing bodies and those bodies know who has done what. They can select whoever they want to put on their teams. If someone is deemed eligible to race for their country then that is their decision. The rest of us just have to get on with it.”