Last September, in the absence of US-based Kirsty Coventry, Samanth Richter was Zimbabwe's only medal winner at the All Africa swim championships. Now she and her family have fled to New Zealand after her family was forced off its farm at gunpoint.

Their crime: being white. Their plight is part the mad and savage world of Robert Mugabe, a so-called leader who has crippled his nation, whether black or white.

Richter, 17, was training at the Pretoria high performance centre in South Africa when her parents Bruce and Sharon were forced off their farm two weeks ago, according to reports out of Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

At the Senegal championships, Richter won three bronze medals, over 50m butterfly (29.13sec), 100m freestyle (59.44sec) and 50m freestyle (27.56sec) and established an age-group record in the 100m butterfly.

Her mother is reported as saying that the family's eviction from their home was "trying" for her three daughters.

There may come a point when Zimbabwe may find itself locked out of the Olympic Games. What then for Kirsty Coventry, one of the world's leading women swimmers, a woman praised and rewarded by Mugabe in a disgusting display of hypocrisy? The politics of racism has afflicted swimming history before, with the likes of Karen Muir locked out of the pool in the 1960s because of a white regime that could not live in harmony with its black countrymen and women.