Rate it!

0 votes

A German swimmer who won a court injunction to be added to her country's Olympic squad after failing to qualify in the pool will stay in the United States for the time being rather than return home as planned.

Vipa Bernhardt will not come back to Germany this week due to the controversy over her legal challenge but instead will continue training in Florida where she lives and studies, an official of her Frankfurt-based club said.

"There's too much turmoil here at the moment," Michael Ulmer, the SG Frankfurt sporting director, told SID sports news agency.

The club won a court injunction on Monday forcing the German National Olympic Committee to include Bernhardt in the squad for next month's Beijing Games.

Bernhardt, who originally planned to return to Germany this week, got an injunction from a state court in Kassel and the 25-year-old was added to the team on Tuesday under protest from DOSB president Thomas Bach.

An executive board meeting will decide on July 20 if another swimmer will be removed from the team as a result of the decision.

Bernhardt finished third in the 200 metres breaststroke at the German national championships in April, just failing to get a top-two spot needed to make the team for Beijing even though her time was well inside the Olympic qualifying mark.

Bernhardt's court challenge was based on the fact that the second-placed swimmer, Anne Poleska, had raced for the Coral Springs swimming club in Florida. Bernhardt and Poleska have both lived and trained in the United States.

Poleska won the bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and silver at the 2005 world championships in Montreal.

German swimming federation rules allow participation in foreign college or school swimming teams but not foreign clubs.

According to those rules, Poleska should not have been allowed to swim at the German national championships.

Poleska said she had done nothing wrong and was not a member of any club when she swam in the Florida meetings.

Michael Wolski, a lawyer and chairman of Bernhardt's club SG Frankfurt which filed the legal challenge on her behalf, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he had presented documents showing Poleska took part in 10 club meetings for Coral Springs.

Reuters