Former Aussie gold medallist James Magnussen says Olympic organisers have sacrificed swimming world records due to a “eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality”.
Magnussen won gold, silver, and bronze medals at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2016 and was 100m freestyle world champion in 2011 and 2013.
Writing for News Corp, Magnussen – who recently became a controversial spokesman for the free-for-all sporting drug-fest known as the Enhanced Games – claimed wokeness was leading to weakness when it comes to producing world class results.
“The Olympic Games are about trying to get the perfect performance in the most imperfect environment,” wrote Magnussen.
“There are so many extenuating circumstances that make the Olympic Games the hardest environment to perform at your best.
“We’ve already heard the likes of Ariarne Titmus talk about how difficult life is in the village, so we can’t dismiss those complaints as an athlete whining because they didn’t win gold.”
Magnussen said there “here’s multiple factors that make village life far from ideal” including cardboard beds, no airconditioning and crowded buses with no air flow.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
“From our sample size thus far, this Olympics is showing that it may be one of the toughest environments we’ve seen to produce world record swims,” wrote Magnussen.
“The lack of world records boils down to this whole eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance.
“They had a charter that said 60 per cent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones.
The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise — world class athletes don’t have vegan diets.
“They must have watched the Netflix doco Game Changers and assumed everyone was the same. But let me tell you, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer — none of those guys are on a vegan diet.
“It seemed Paris wanted to be eco first, performance second at the Games.”
Before the swim session started Magnussen complained that the Aussie swimmers were being forced out of the village 48 hours after their final competition.
If what he’s saying about the lack of meat is true, the athletes might be desperate to leave for a decent meal.
Magnussen was the first athlete in the world to sign up for the Enhanced Games, founded by Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza.
He will be paid $1.5 million to take part.
“If they put up $1m for the 50 freestyle world record, I will come on board as their first athlete,” said Magnussen.
“I’ll juice to the gills and I’ll break it in six months.”
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