It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin and I've spoken with athletes who for years afterward have been tormented by the knowledge that had they done something ever so slightly different they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.
The failure of the system to deal quickly was attributable to Nixon's lying stonewalling and refusal to come clean. So it took 26 months for the final truth to be known.
