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Home > Jeff Schultz > Archives > 2008 > August > 15
Friday, August 15, 2008
Olympics track running from drug controversy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Beijing — It was so much more fun when we could just wag our finger at everybody else.
Ben Johnson shows up at a track meet looking like Lou Ferrigno. Chinese swimmers shatter swim records — and land speed records. East German women suddenly answer to the name, “Wolfgang.”
Us? Not us, we thought. We don’t cheat.
Until syringes started and coded notes started falling out of pockets. Until HGH and THG and EPO became part of the sports lexicon. Until BALCO. Until Marion Jones, C.J. Hunter, Tim Montgomery, Chryste Gaines, Justin Gatlin, Kelli White and even a set of twins, Alvin and Calvin Harrison, who presumably bought in bulk.
Now look at the U.S. Olympic track team. If the field seems devoid of stars, it’s probably because everybody is either retired, jailed, suspended, excommunicated or holding tearful statements on courtroom steps to admit that they were lying all of those times they said they weren’t lying and they will never lie again because they’re really a good person, so help them [fill in name of image consultant].
The Olympics started Friday for U.S. track and field team members. They have two objectives: 1) Win medals; 2) Make sure their blood and urine samples don’t melt the bottom of the test tubes.
“I don’t think you’re going to see anybody on our team having problems with that,” shot-putter Christian Cantwell said. “In the US, with as much as we get tested, you would have to be a [freakin’] idiot to take drugs. I hope the dumb ones are out. I hope the [losers] are out. They’re the ones who are screwing it up for everybody else. I hope every cheater is caught.”
It will take at least one Olympic cycle and several months without a warehouse bust to convince people. But at least some U.S. athletes are trying. Several are members of “Test Me I’m Clean,” a non-profit organization started by 400-meter champion Dee Dee Trotter of Grovetown, Ga. The program educates youths and athletes on the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) recently started “Project Believe,” in which athletes voluntarily submit to extra testing.
“Any time someone tests positive in track and field, it’s a major blow,” said decathlete Brian Clay, who is in the program. “It can be during trials, during the Olympics, during Christmas, whenever. It’s even more of a blow to the athletes who are trying to do it the right way. It takes away endorsement opportunities from us. It takes away our ability to move forward. Quite frankly, it sucks.”
Reese Hoffa, the shot-putter from Georgia, said Friday he was tested three times in a span of 10 days after arriving in China. But he’s not complaining. “Any time something happens, the sport gets tarnished,” he said. “When I hear about somebody testing positive, I’m a little saddened by it. When I heard about Marion Jones, I was just happy that she was a sprinter and not a shot-putter.”
Jones can’t possibly comprehend how much damage she did when she lied to two grand juries and the public about steroid use. She was high profile, successful, cute. Kids weren’t the only ones who looked up to her.
“I looked up to her,” said Allyson Felix, the 200-meter sprinter. “It was personally devastating for me to see that it was true. I guess I felt even more responsible to be a role model to younger kids because that was important to me. It would be great if my role model could have been clean and still be my role model.
“I think we all know that our sport has taken another step backward. I think we’re all in agreement that it’s our responsibility to shed some light back on our sport and we can do that with some amazing performances.”
What happened to the image of U.S. track and field team wasn’t the same as everybody else. Track is our centerpiece. Track is Jesse Owens, Bob Mathias and Wilma Rudolph. Jones, Montgomery and Gatlin — they wrecked more than their own lives. They wrecked a sport. They wrecked a legacy. They wrecked the joke.
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