Tracey Wickham and Michelle Ford: Mystery over the seemingly innocent act that kicked off a war between Australia's best Olympic swimmers 46 years ago is finally solved

An Olympic feud that has boiled for almost 50 years has resulted in a shocking twist, with a revelation that could have prevented two of Australia's best swimmers of all time from being at each other's throats.

Tracey Wickham and Michelle Ford were two 15 year old school girls were both prodigious talents and rivals in the pool.

They were the two greatest middle-distance freestylers in the world and part of a superhuman Australian team aiming to challenge the might of East Germany in the pool.

However a series of events out of their control led to one of the most fierce and enduring feuds in Australian Olympic history. 

It began when Tracey Wickham made the difficult decision not to attend the Moscow Olympics, aligning with the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott. 

This boycott, the largest in Olympic history, was part of a series of actions led by the United States to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser undertook a lengthy and expensive campaign to prevent the Australian team from participating in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. 

Despite his efforts, the campaign ultimately failed, and Wickham became a focal point of criticism for choosing not to compete.

Wickham was the youngest, most celebrated, and high-profile athlete among those who decided against going to Moscow.

'My reasons for not going were purely personal, not political,' Wickham explained in 2011. 

'My parents had just divorced, dad was in America, and mum had hardly any money. And there I was, a champion of the world.'

'I had glandular fever and didn't know it. I couldn't understand why my times were declining. I knew two things: I was far from peak condition, and Australia expected me to win gold.'

Meanwhile, Ford, who competed and won gold at the Moscow Olympics, had broken East German Olympic champion Petra Thumer's 800m freestyle record in January 1978. Ford then lowered her own record two weeks later.

But while Ford did go to Moscow, she returned home knowing she had been robbed.

Ford's achievements could have included two additional gold medals, placing her among an elite group of 21 Australians who have secured three or more Olympic golds. This distinguished group features legendary names like Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland, Ian Thorpe, and, more recently, Emma McKeon.

However, Ford's exclusion from this revered list stems from her competition against one of the most sophisticated doping schemes in Olympic history during the Moscow Games.

'Michelle Ford defended the Western world against an almighty drug cheating machine by winning the women's 800m freestyle,' Australia's head swim coach in Moscow Bill Sweetenham said.

Subsequent systematic evidence confirmed that Ford competed against athletes who were doping. Despite these revelations, the medals from the Moscow Olympics have never been reallocated.

So both Wickham and Ford were already fuming when a seemingly innocent act lit the fuse for a major conflict.

Ford broke East German champion Petra Thumer's 800m freestyle record in January 1978, then broke it again two weeks later. 

However a month later, Wickham took the record from Ford. Already rivals, Wickham sent Ford flowers with a note saying, 'Congratulations Tracey. It won't be so easy next time! Love, Michelle.'

Wickham was upset by this, and when the story leaked to the Australian media, it intensified their rivalry to the point it nearly resulted in legal action.

Now, it can be revealed that Ford never sent the flowers or card at all, it was part of a mind game from Sweetenham to get the fierce rivals going even harder in the pool.

He had kept the story under wraps for years, but he finally revealed it during an interview with British investigative journalist Craig Lord.

Lord, who co-authored Ford's autobiography *Turning The Tide: The Story of an Olympic Champion*, brought the secret to light. 

'I had the flowers and the card sent!' Sweetenham said.

'Here's what happened. I used Michelle as a whipping post for Tracey, who would rest on her laurels pretty easily if you let her. 

'So, I'd be on to Tracey saying 'look Michelle's down there in Sydney breaking world records, so how about it', as a way of getting her to do it.

'The day after, I thought 'now she's got the world record, how am I going to motivate her?'.

'So I got … a young coach learning the ropes at the time to whip round to the flower shop and get a huge bunch of flowers and write on the card … and send it to the Valley Pool.

'I felt guilty about that from the moment I did it. I shouldn't have done it but sport is an uncompromising battle and in those days we were living through very dark days where the things the East Germans were doing forced us to think of ways to get the girls to unlock the very best of themselves.'

To this day, Ford remains unsure of who exactly sent the flowers. However, she told News Corp that she had heard it was Sweetenham who orchestrated the gesture.

'I've never spoken to Bill about this,' she said.

'But he apparently sent the flowers to Tracey, saying 'I'll get you next time'.

'It always had a bit of a twist to it.

'I've never I never had a chance to confirm it with Tracey. The sad thing was we were teenage kids and we had no idea.'