Dope casts cloud over Olympic track trials
Doug Robinson
What drug, he meant.
That's the way it is for track and field these days. The sport has been banished to the corner of the sports universe, at least partly for its drug sins. Did you even know that the Olympic trials are under way in Eugene, Ore.? It's a well-kept secret judging from the newspaper and TV coverage, which has been relegated to tiny back-page notes columns and late-night cable.
It will be the same story in Beijing, where, thanks to NBC, the schedule has been arranged to give swimming and gymnastics the live, prime-time TV coverage in the U.S. while track, once the premier Olympic sport, will be shown on tape delay.
Years ago, I wrote a column that lamented the sad state of affairs in which track and field found itself and the inequities of the war on drugs in sport. Because track has subjected itself to the most serious testing program and metes out the most severe penalties for drug offenders, it has both helped and hurt the sport. By catching an extraordinary number of high-profile cheats, it has also developed the worst reputation this side of cycling.
As The New York Times more recently put it, "Track and field finds itself in an ironic position. Along with cycling, it tries harder to catch drug cheats than any other sport with stringent testing. Yet, the more drug users it catches, the worse its reputation becomes."
In some ways, track might have been better off if it had stuck its collective head in the sand the way Major League Baseball did for years and, one suspects, the way the NFL is doing now.
"The reward for doing the right thing is being labeled as having a drug problem," Craig Masback, the former chief executive of USA Track and Field, said in an interview last year.
Drug suspensions have claimed Olympic sprint champions, world record holders and world champions (Ben Johnson, Linford Christie, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Kelli White). It's the track equivalent of having Kobe Bryant or Peyton Manning suspended for a couple of years for cheating, as if that would ever happen.
The side effect of all this is that because of track's reputation, track athletes are considered guilty until proven innocent, and there is no way to prove they are innocent because drug tests have been proven vastly ineffective in catching cheats. Marion Jones reportedly took 160 tests and never flunked one of them; she has admitted to using drugs and is now in jail for lying to federal authorities.
Recent comments
Reality, when, in the "sports" world, you can find ten...
Alan Cunningham | July 3, 2008 at 9:27 a.m.
EXTRA:
Swimming is no cleaner then track. Swimmers were named...
to all wet | July 2, 2008 at 11:34 p.m.
Anonymous, are you saying skepticism is bad? Wow, that is really...
Reality. | July 2, 2008 at 6:07 p.m.
