Last week the aquatics world governing body, the International Swimming Federation (FINA), announced it had voted to strip Dr Lothar Kipke, chief doctor of the East German swimming team during the 1970s and 1980s, of the honour it had awarded him in 1985.

To describe this decision as belated would be entirely fair. It came almost 22 years after Kipke was convicted in a criminal court of playing a key role in the doping of East German swimmers.

Kipke, now 92, was presented with the FINA silver pin award in 1985.

He was convicted in January 2000 of more than 50 charges of causing bodily harm after giving performance-enhancing drugs to young athletes and was given a $4,000 (£2,975/€3546) fine and a 15-month suspended jail sentence.

The action is a high-profile sign of the reforming zeal of Husain Al-Musallam, who took over as FINA President in June from the longstanding incumbent, 85-year-old Julio Maglione, the Uruguayan who had held his post since 2009.

In his speech to the FINA Congress on June 4, Al-Musallam, a 61-year-old former airline pilot from Kuwait announced: "In summary, FINA is going to give athletes a louder voice, more prize money and more support.

"This, my friends, is an historic day for our athletes. And there is still much more that I want to achieve."

On the latter front, he underlined his already stated plans to reform FINA's constitution.

"I will instigate reform across the whole of FINA," he said.

"I am going to set up a number of Reform Committees that will look at every aspect of FINA's work.

"Marketing, communication, governance, anti-doping, gender equity, safeguarding, major events, helping children by strengthening grassroots sports. These will all be included.”

In October a report from the FINA Reform Committee, chaired by former International Olympic Committee (IOC) director general and FINA's legal counsel François Carrard, made recommendations in six key areas.

One of the key recommendations put forward by Carrard, who performed a similar reforming role for FIFA in 2015, was the establishment of an independent integrity unit to deal with anti-doping cases, similar to the Athletics Integrity Unit established within the athletics world governing body since April 2017.

It had been reported that Al-Musallam’s push for greater transparency may include an investigation into the East German doping programme headed by Kipke. And there was speculation that such an investigation could include reallocating medals and titles to athletes cheated out of achievements by East German competitors.

However, whether the emblematic ruling concerning Kipke will be followed by any further significant action in that area remains moot.

Jack Buckner, chief executive of British Swimming and one of the 12 members of the FINA Reform Committee, told insidethegames: "The new FINA President is serious about reform and the reform group I am part of is genuinely trying to reform the sport.

"Part of this is looking at historic cases and seeing what can be done. I don’t know how long it will take and what the role of the IOC is."

Buckner, who won the 5,000 metres title at the 1986 European Athletics Championships, added: "Husain wants to make a positive impact on the sport and change the image from the past. I think he will try very seriously to address this but it’s a question of time and resource – he is changing a lot very quickly so I guess it will depend how easy it is to deliver on."

Ultimately, the question of re-allocation of medals lies within the remit of the IOC. Meanwhile, International Federations are bound – in terms of reallocating medals following the re-testing of samples or other evidence regarding a case – by the World Anti-Doping Code’s statute of limitations.

The 2021 World Anti-Doping Code Article 17 on this topic reads thus:

"No anti-doping rule violation proceeding may be commenced against an Athlete or other Person unless he or she has been notified of the anti-doping rule violation as provided in Article 7, or notification has been reasonably attempted, within ten (10) years from the date the violation is asserted to have occurred."

In a statement to insidethegames, FINA said: "FINA remains committed to doing what it can to address historical issues of unfairness while ensuring a fair present and future for aquatics athletes. 

"The commitment to the past can clearly be seen from the stripping of Dr Lothar Kipke’s FINA award, while our commitment to the present and future can be clearly seen from the creation of the Aquatics Integrity Unit.

"The widespread doping of athletes in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) took place long before the creation of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) or a single, globally-applicable Anti-Doping Code. Any disciplinary cases against individual athletes would have to be made according to the rules in existence at the time."

The shape and reach of any future investigation into FINA history will be determined by the Aquatics Integrity Unit, which is due to come into being before the end of this year with a view to setting itself up for approval at next June’s FINA Congress.

Meanwhile, the question of if, or how, FINA decides to follow up on its action against Kipke will be followed with huge interest by the swimming community – and none will be observing more keenly than Enith Brigitha of The Netherlands, Shirley Babashoff of the United States and Britain’s Sharron Davies, Olympic medallists who can claim they were denied gold by opponents who have long since been shown to have operated under a state-run doping regime.

Brigitha, the first black athlete to win a swimming medal at the Olympics, finished third in the women’s 100m at the 1976 Montreal Games behind East Germany’s Kornelia Ender, who won in a world record of 55.65sec, and Petra Priemer.

At the same Games, Babashoff finished in silver medal position in the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle behind, respectively, Ender and, in the two longer disciplines, East Germany’s Petra Thumer.

At the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Davies took silver in the women’s 400m individual medley behind East Germany’s Petra Schneider.

Since the revelations that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 of the all-embracing doping system that East German athletes, male and female, were forced to compete within, many voices have been raised within a range of sports calling for justice to be done for those denied their rightful success by this phenomenon.

In terms of swimming, Brigitha has since said that she considers herself a gold medal winner.

Babashoff was widely criticised in the media in the wake of the Montreal Olympics after making loud complaints about her East German opponents, whom she described as looking and sounding like men. For her pains, she was described as "Surly Shirley" in some quarters.

In 2005, long after the truth of the East German regime had come out, Babashoff received the Olympic Order, the highest award of the Olympic Movement.

On January 1, 2014, Babashoff responded to an initiative by Swimming World magazine, which had decided not to acknowledge 28 titles won by East German women based on a mix of positive tests, personal admissions and doping admissions from their coaches.

"I completely support and respect the efforts being made by Swimming World Magazine; calling on the IOC to set the records straight in regards to the medals that myself, my teammates and many other athletes were deprived of as a result of the (admitted) East German state-sponsored doping program," she said.

At the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Davies took silver in the women’s 400m individual medley behind East Germany’s Petra Schneider. "All my career I was swimming against Eastern bloc swimmers who were on a drug programme devised for them from above," Davies said in January 1998. "How can the world records or medals that were set or won stay in place now the truth is known?"

Speaking to insidethegames today, Davies said: "I’m very pleased FINA want to try to right some serious wrongs from the past.

"They have years of sub-standard leadership to get over to get the faith and trust back of the swimmers, but the new leadership seem committed to try.

"Which is extremely promising.

"I’m overjoyed for past swimmers let down so badly and those in our sport today who just want good, fair and transparent governance where athletes are put front and centre.

"The GDR [East Germany] era was allowed to go on for two decades totally unchecked and seems only right that it’s recognised officially at long last.

"I hope this will show huge commitment from FINA to the aquatics world of their intentions going forward that wrongs will be corrected no matter how long it takes."

In the wake of the decision over Kipke, Swimming World observed: "In a reversal of its former approach, in which it ignored the subject, FINA has indicated it is willing to look at history and, possibly, alter it for the sake of the athletes who suffered injustices in the pool. Although FINA is willing to look at the past, it is important to note that the awarding of retroactive medals will require the approval of the IOC.

"If retroactive medals are awarded, it is unlikely the East German athletes will have their medals stripped. As part of the systematic-doping programme that was instituted and guided by the government, the athletes were pawns in a political system, and instructed to follow the directions of their coaches and senior officials."

British athletics sprinter Kathy Cook was another who lost out to East German athletes subsequently implicated in doping. It was Cook’s misfortune that her prime should coincide with the prime years of a regime that turned a small country of 17 million people into the third strongest sporting nation on earth behind the United States and the Soviet Union.

If one subtracts the performances of retrospectively implicated East Germans in Cook’s races, you could argue she would have been European 200m champion in 1982 instead of silver medallist, and that she would have had another two Olympic medals to go with the bronze she won in the 400m at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Cook had sympathy for Davies' position. "I can fully understand how Sharron feels," she told me some years ago. "Just like her, I have been thinking about the question recently. You do wonder if things in your life might have been different if all this had come to light nearer the time."

Over time, Cook – who is married to another former British athlete, 400m runner Garry – has reached her own position on the question. "Garry and I talk about it when evidence comes out, and we say, jokingly, I was robbed. But I had my fair share of standing on the rostrum, and I think there is too much water under the bridge to change things now."

Cook’s magnanimity was partly informed by simple logic. As she pointed out, if GDR performances were annulled, how could one legislate for all those wrongfully knocked out in the heats and semi-finals, and how could one know how they might have reacted to the challenge of continuing competition?

Cook, who retired from the track in 1987, got to know a number of East German athletes during her ten-year career. "Sometimes I would have to look at runners twice because their whole shape had completely changed," she said. "The most disturbing thing was the way some of the girls' voices had lowered. The idea that the whole team was involved, lock, stock and barrel, is horrifying, especially when you think that some of them were so young."

She was particularly disappointed to see the evidence implicating Marita Koch, who took gold, two places ahead of her, in the Moscow 1980 400m final. "Marita was a role model for me," Cook said. 

"She was a really nice person, and she had this charisma. The crowd would go silent because she was so fast. She just destroyed fields. I remember watching on television when she set her world record and I was just speechless. 

"I don’t know how I would feel if I ever saw her again. I’ve no particular wish to. I feel a mixture of sadness and anger about the whole thing."

Cook’s strongest expression of anger was directed not at an East German opponent, but one from Canada: Angela Issajenko, who beat her to the 1986 Commonwealth 200m title and admitted three years later – at the Dubin Inquiry, sparked by the scandal of Ben Johnson’s failed test at the 1988 Seoul Olympics – that she had taken drugs since 1980.

"I did feel angrier about what Angela did because she chose to go down that track herself," Cook said. "It seems a lot of the East German athletes were taken as youngsters and told what to do without always being given the facts. It is a horrific situation, but you can have more sympathy for people involved in it."

Attitudes in other sports vary. Hugh Matheson was a member of the British rowing eight beaten to gold by the East Germans at the Montreal Olympics of 1976. But he has gone on record to say he does not embrace the idea of being promoted to gold by virtue of the East German result being annulled. "We had silver, but we were beaten by stronger men," he said.

It has also been pointed out, with good reason, that other nations have been known to transgress anti-doping rulings over the years...