SYDNEY – The Olympic ideal is now that you have to check in every zippered bag and blood cell to see what is there. Yet, the invasion of privacy does not make us believe the Games are safe or clean. In fact, the Games don’t make us believe in much of anything any more.
Without the ideal, why have the Olympics?
It is a legitimate question since we can no longer even pretend America is upholding the ideal. The rest of the world certainly does not buy that we are a beacon. Other countries at these Games have grown exhausted with Americans pointing fingers of corruption elsewhere, especially when it comes to drug testing. We claim veins filled with only red, white and blue purity. It is always the other guys who are drugging, particularly when they are standing atop the medal podium.
Because of that a few friends from around the globe were only too happy to leak to the world media details of C.J. Hunter’s positive test for a banned steroid. Consider that Dick Pound, an IOC VP in charge of the organization’s doping committee, took a nearly unprecedented step before full confirmation of the Hunter allegations of saying for the record that “a reliable source” had told him that Hunter had a positive drug test. To offer such a second-hand source, shows an anxiousness to disseminate this information.
This news about a shot-putter not even competing at these Games had the effect of bringing into question every member of the American track and field team, especially Hunter’s wife, Marion Jones – who stood by her man today during a press conference held by the couple to proclaim Hunter’s innocence.
Consider this a purpose pitch thrown by the international community. It is directed at the holier-than-thou American proclamations that when we win it is because of good old-fashioned hard work and when you win there could be chemical enhancements. There is a growing sentiment that we are simply more advanced at masking drugs in the system than poorer nations and/or that we have a bureaucracy willing to cover up for our best athletes.
IOC drug chief Prince Alexandre de Merode used yesterday to charge that USA Track and Field (USATF) covered up five positive drugs tests from the 1988 Summer Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee said there were eight cases, all for ephedrine, and that the athletes were cleared because it was contained in an herbal supplement.
Earlier this week – before the Hunter news broke – Arne Ljungqvist, the anti-doping chief of the IAAF (track and field’s world governing body), said the USATF covered up 12-15 positive drug tests. USATF CEO Craig Masback said a “lack of communication” caused Ljungqvist to say this and that the matter had been resolved.
Not enough to keep IOC member Johann Olav Koss, the one-time Norwegian speedskating gold medalist, from saying, “The athletes feel that the IAAF and USA Track and Field are covering up and have special rules for American athletes.”
Masback said, “There has been no attempt to cover up any tests in my three years at USA Track and Field.” Masback said no one who qualified for these Games at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in July tested positive for a banned substance. Hunter qualified by finishing second in the shot put. On July 28 – five days after the Trials ended – he gave the urine sample to the IAAF at a meet in Oslo that would prove positive, the IOC and IAAF confirmed. Before the charges became public, Hunter withdrew from the Olympics to have knee surgery in early September.
At various times, there are tests administered by the USATF, the IAAF and the IOC. Masback said, “No one on this Olympic team is in the test process in any way,” meaning he knows of no positive tests that are still to come. That was an attempt to broadly clear Jones, whose relationship to Hunter is hurting her reputation, and also the rest of the track and field team since rumors were flying that more positive American test results were coming.
“No, I would say quite the contrary,” Masback said when asked if the world was more suspicious of his athletes than in the past.
This feels like payback.
At the swimming pool, American head coach Richard Quick said, “I absolutely do not think this is a drug-free Olympics. I am disappointed in the quality and frequency of the testing that is done by the international governing body of the Olympics.” Damned by implication were break-out Dutch swimmers Inge de Bruijn and Pieter van den Hoogeband. U.S. weightlifting coach Michael Cohen said there was not a drug problem in his sport, just “one rogue country” in reference to Bulgaria, which had its weightlifting team evicted from these Games because of too many positive tests.
American officials have been wagging their finger at the international community that a better job must be done to clean up sports and Masback’s spin yesterday in the face of having one of his top athletes (Hunter) reportedly having 1,000 times the normal level of the banned steroid nandrolone in his system was to say USATF is actually ahead of the world in testing.
But even Masback conceded, “You can decide everyone is cheating or relatively few. I was an athlete and I don’t believe a vast number of athletes are cheating. But I have no more right to say that than someone saying everyone is cheating.” And there is that feeling. The IOC and other governing bodies do not yet have satisfactory tests for a variety of banned substances such as human growth hormone. There can be plenty of cheating going on with no detection. The richest country in the world with the best scientists and facilities is best positioned to lead the cheating way.
And the world does not seem willing to turn its head on the subject anymore.