On Feb. 9, officials were hailing what they expected would be the most drug-free Winter Games, based on not only stepped-up drug testing but a belief that the athletes, who all knew about the stepped-up drug testing, would opt to compete clean rather than risk the embarrassment of being caught and perhaps thrown out of competition.
After all, it's no fun when the leader of your country makes a fuss over you and then you're revealed as a cheater.
It didn't turn out that way. In fact, our Winter Olympics, though beautifully managed, exhilarating to watch and a lot of fun to be in the midst of, were pretty dopey from that standpoint.
But not as dopey as rules that allowed people who cheated to keep medals they'd won earlier in the 2002 competition because the drug screening that accompanied those events didn't detect a banned substance or "prohibited method."
That was the case with three athletes, Olga Danilova and Larissa Lazutina, both cross country skiers from Russia, and Johann Muehlegg, a cross country competitor from Spain, all busted for the presence in their blood of darbepoetin, a substance similar to the banned erythropoietin (EPO), which increases oxygen-carrying red blood cells. An interesting thing about darbepoetin is that it has been widely reported — even as late as early in the Games — that it's undetectable, which no doubt makes it appealing to athletes looking for an edge. Whoops. Guess you can't believe everything you hear.
Danilova didn't lose any medals because she was busted for doping in a race she didn't win, not the races she won. She kept both a silver and gold medal and, I suppose, bragging rights. Both Lazutina and Muehlegg kept earlier-won medals and were each stripped of a gold, for the same reason. Olympics Director General Francois Carrard said that to strip them of the earlier medals would be unfair and possibly pose legal issues for the International Olympic Committee.
They're caught cheating and the IOC's afraid it might face consequences?
In all fairness, all three of the athletes are appealing the doping disqualifications and each one hopes to prove his or her innocence. And I honestly wish them luck with that endeavor. I hope they are innocent and they can prove it, because doping scandals take a lot of the shine off the Olympic dream.
Failing that, I'm with the Norwegians, who this week took the IOC to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to demand that athletes caught doping during the Salt Lake Games lose all the medals earned in competition here. Granted, I don't stand to gain a medal if dopers are stripped, and the Norwegians do. Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset would get a bronze if Muehlegg were disqualified in the 50K and two of its members, Thomas Alsgaard and Frode Estil, had tied for second behind Muehlegg in the men's 15K.
No doubt they'd like to boost their medals count, and who can blame them? But it goes deeper than that. There's a certain anger that goes with being beaten by someone who has a history of cheating. And if you want to give a real anti-doping message, you cannot let people caught doping walk away victors. Though perhaps nothing can be done about these instances, the IOC ought to do whatever it needs to do technically to spell out that anyone caught doping during the Games will lose everything earned during those Games.
By far my favorite doping story came after the Games, when the blood transfusion materials were left behind in the home in Midway by someone on the Austrian men's cross country team. ("We weren't cheating, we were protecting ourselves from flu or cold." "Well, OK. We were doping. But only a little.")
Can you imagine the conversation at the Salt Lake Airport as they waited long hours to board their flight home?
"What'd you do with that stuff?"
"What did I do? I thought you were taking care of it."
Don't you hate it when you get that nagging feeling that you forgot something?
It's no coincidence they call it "doping."
Deseret News staff writer Lois M. Collins may be reached by e-mail at lois@desnews.com
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