SWIMMING’S rules are set to be tightened to prevent a cash-for-medals culture developing after Duje Draganja, Croatia’s Olympic medal-winning sprinter, yesterday became the first swimmer to accept $1 million (about £580,000) to race for Qatar.

Incentives of up to £2 million plus bonuses for medals have been offered for several of the world’s leading swimmers to switch allegiance to the Gulf state, whose gas and oil reserves are expected to make it the wealthiest nation on earth per capita within two years. Those riches have already lured world-class runners and weightlifters to Qatar.

Ryk Neethling and Roland Schoeman, members of South Africa’s victorious Olympic 4 x 100 metres freestyle team in Athens, have each been offered $1 million a year for three years. Neethling refused the offer and has called on Fina, the world governing body for aquatic sports, to preserve “the sanctity of nationhood” in sport, while Schoeman, like Draganja, has used the situation as a bargaining tool with his country of origin.

Draganja, who won the silver medal over 50 metres freestyle in Athens and trains at Berkeley, California, said: “I have accepted Qatar’s offer and from next year they will be my sponsors. Reaching the sports goals I desire requires big funds. Attempts to find sponsors in Croatia have failed.”

The swimmer, who will not relinquish his Croatian passport, claimed to have secured a Qatari passport in August, a necessity if he is to meet the Olympic Charter’s three-year citizenship rule before Beijing 2008. However, his hopes of racing at the World Short-Course Championships in Shanghai next April are likely to be dashed. Fina recently enforced its one-year citizenship rule when it denied Joanna Fargus, a British swimmer who was raised in Australia and recently returned to live there, permission to represent Australia in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March.

Cornel Marculescu, executive director of Fina, told The Times that the issue would be high on the agenda at its next congress meeting in April, the first chance for the body to vote on rule changes. “We will take a look at the rulebook,” he said. “We need to keep some sense in our sport. It is one thing to change country in the case of human rights but this is something else.” He predicted that swimming would fall in line with the Olympic Charter’s three-year rule, as athletics did last year.

Before the Olympic Games in Athens last year, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said: “What we don’t like is athletes being lured by large incentives by other countries — giving them a passport when they arrive at the airport.” Perhaps he should have a word with the heir to the Qatari throne, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, a member of the IOC and head of his national Olympic committee that is behind Qatar’s recruitment programme.

When contacted by The Times, Khaleel al-Jabir, secretary-general of the Qatar Swimming Association and one of the chief organisers of the Asian Games in 2006, at first denied that any offers had been made to swimmers. This was despite confirmation to the contrary from competitors, including Domenico Fioravanti, Olympic champion over 100 and 200 metres breaststroke in Sydney in 2000, who was approached by Qatar after Italy forced him to retire from competition in 2001 when a doctor’s report suggested he was suffering from a heart condition. The Times understands that no formal offer was made.

When asked if the swimmers were therefore telling lies, al-Jabir answered: “No.” He said that deals with swimmers were something Qatar was “considering for the future”. However, he saw no difficulties ahead. “It’s sport, like football,” al-Jabir said. “If athletes want to naturalise themselves for a better future life, why shouldn’t they?”

It is believed that Qatar is driven by a desire to excel when it hosts the Asian Games in Doha next year. The Arab state has enjoyed rewards from its programme to the detriment of other nations. Kenya has complained vociferously over the case of Stephen Cherono, formerly its own 3,000 metres steeplechase champion but who ran under his new Arabic name, Saif Saeed Shaheen, to win the world title, while Qatar was also embroiled in controversy over its deals with Bulgarian weightlifters.

Other Arab states have followed suit. Rashid Ramzi, the former Moroccan, won the 800 metres and 1,500 metres double for Bahrain at the World Athletics Championships in Helsinki this year. Ramzi won his titles days before the International Association of Athletics Federations tightened its rules on switching flags in line with the Olympic Charter.

The Australian coach at the helm of Qatari swimming, Otto Sonnleitner, has not been involved in the financial offers. However, he has held meetings with swimmers and managers and sees no ethical problems in the practice of wooing athletes to switch allegiance for money.

“On the financial offers that are being talked about, I have had nothing to do with any of it,” Sonnleitner said. “That doesn’t mean that I am against it all . . . top business people, doctors, researchers and entertainers get what they can, why not athletes? Not everyone is in the situation of Ian Thorpe, with endorsements in Australia and Japan that will support him for the rest of his life.”

TOP TRANSFERS

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