You wouldn't expect Orjan Madsen, Germany's performance director, to call his charges a bunch of wimps but he did have a harsh word or two for a squad that has largely opted out of the European Championships in Eindhoven, where seven days of action get underway tomorrow.

The continent's most successful swimming nation has just 10 swimmers down to race, while one of those, Janine Pietsch, is out through illness (bronchitis). The biggest gun is middle distance improver Paul Biedermann. All of which prompted Madsen to question the lack of spirit in his charges.

He had hoped that his swimmers and coaches would, when presented with a choice of whether to race in Eindhoven or not, have chosen to 'show more courage' and 'stand up and becounted'. Most had put all their eggs in one basked: the Olympic trials in Berlin late next month. 'They did not need to be at their peak but it would have been good for them to stand up and be counted. They are not exposing themselves to top international competition nearly enough ... and that's a big problem. It's a problem for the continent but I'm here to talk about us - and it's a big problem for us.'

A big problem, too, when it came down to perception. Hide and emerge with fast times and the whole world might point a finger, as it did in the days before Melbourne 2007, when the German team faced more scrutiny bordering on open accusation than any other team in town - by a country mile. Madsen said that nothing the German team did could change the GDR's past - and therefore the team would have to live with the suspicion that lingers yet every time a German swims fast.

The way round that was to extend Germany's blood passport system to the world, freeze blood and adopt rules that allow exhumation of samples for future testing. The problem was one of funding: the DSV's programme started out as a university research programme but, when funding for that ended, the German federation raised the funds itself to maintain a testing regime that costs around 100,000 euros a year.

'We can do thyat but it is not easy to find that money.Many countries don't have that kind of money,' said Madsen in a comment that touched upon the unfair nature of the current testing regime across the globe. 'FINA, NADA (Germany's anti-doping authority) and WADA need to allocate more money to this. Politicians need to understand that if we want to do more of this (blood testing), they need to allocate more money to this.' The programme should go global as soon as possible and it should involve the freezing of blood with open-ended responsibility and commitment of athletes to have their samples tested at any time in the future.

It is the way to go. The only way to protect the Britta Steffens and Eamon Sullivans of the world when they swim to world records - and the fundamental point underlying the Need for Speed article of a couple of days back.