Is sport rotten to the core, or are the events of this summer simply history repeating itself? We have always lived with the suspicion of drugs in sport — apparently even the ancient Greeks swallowed whatever they could find to gain advantage in track and field. So is anybody shocked that Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin, two American icons, are now held up as cheats? It was confirmed yesterday that a second urine sample from Landis proved positive for abnormally high testosterone, and the man who came from nowhere to win the Tour de France last month is now in hiding in San Diego. His lawyers insist that he will fight all the way to disprove what the French laboratory claims: that synthetic testosterone was detectable in samples taken from the day he suddenly revived to outpace all the riders in the Alps on the 17th stage of the Tour.
Gatlin’s Olympic 100m gold medal from Athens is not at risk, but tomorrow he faces a US tribunal accused of equalling the world record 9.77sec three months ago while he knew that he had also proved positive for an unacceptably high level of testosterone in April. He has preached ceaselessly to kids to follow his example.
Let’s not be naive. They are striving to be richer men by showing the world what Americans are made of. Either they, their coaches and their defence teams are hypocrites, or they are wronged men, victims of the war on chemically assisted performance. If anyone is shocked by the failed dope tests, we must ask what planet they are living on. It would be nice to find a haven free from suspicion.
Yet where do we turn? This weekend in Berlin, from where former East German state athletes ruled through systematic drug abuse in the 1970s, organisers of the Golden League athletics meeting in September have banned all competitors associated with Gatlin’s coach, Trevor Graham. That includes Marion Jones, who no longer trains with Graham, who never failed a dope test and who was welcomed at Crystal Palace a week ago.
Who is right — Berlin for banning her, or London for feting her? Mixed messages go through her sport like the name through Brighton rock. Linford Christie, who tested 100 times over the limit when he last ran in 1999, has just flown out to join the Great Britain athletics team at the European championships in Gothenburg.
He retired before he could be banned, but today, under the new regime of UK Athletics performance director Dave Collins, Christie is one of the chosen former athletes flown out to act as role models and guides to the current generation.
Even Sebastian Coe, the man who won the 2012 Olympic Games for London and who is campaigning to release the athletic dream in British youngsters, was moved to write last week: “Track and field is a sport in decline, and the junkies are helping it on its way.” He spoke against Ben Johnson, the disgraced Canadian Olympic 100m runner of Seoul 1988, who insists the public only cares how fast you run, not how you do it.
Deception is all around us. The football World Cup has just been claimed by Italy, a land embroiled in match-fixing and led by Fabio Cannavaro. He is the player caught on video injecting himself with, he claims, legal nutrients in his hotel before a Uefa Cup game some years ago.
The reality of today’s sporting circus is that at the very top it is washed by so much money and such celebrity that men — and women — will do anything to win.
Indeed, win or bust.
In the 1967 Tour de France, an English rider, Tom Simpson, died on Mont Ventoux in the Alps. He was still gripping the handlebars.
His death was attributed toamphetamines and dehydration. I have been with his widow and his daughters to the spot where he collapsed. A memorial slab marks the spot.
In 1998 Florence Griffith- Joyner, the triple gold medallist of the Seoul Games 10 years earlier, died in her sleep. She was 38. Some of us heard the news while celebrating the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. Her friends and family have remained in denial that drugs had anything to do with her swiftness over 100m or her indecently premature demise.
Denial is the first form of defence for scientists who “help” athletes to run faster or push harder in the scrums of life. This weekend Patrick Arnold, an organic chemist, was sentenced to three months in jail after admitting that he created the designer steroid tetrahydragestrinone, or THG.
This was at the centre of the Balco case in California that involved alleged drug use by Barry Bonds, the baseball slugger who is still competing, and Dwain Chambers, the British sprinter who is just back after a two-year ban and has been selected to compete for Great Britain in Gothenburg.
Craig Masback, the executive director of the US Track and Field association, commented last week that Gatlin “has been one of the most visible spokespersons for winning with integrity, and throughout his career has made clear his willingness to take responsibility for his actions”.
The onus now is on the athletes to be responsible for whatever is in their bodies, however it gets there. Gatlin faces a life ban because five years ago he tested positive for an amphetamine as a US junior champion. He might still be rich, but if he is struck off, his name can no longer be put up there alongside Paula Radcliffe as the champions of “clean” athleticism.
However, Britain has been among the pathfinders to drug abuse as well as moralistic wisdom. In 1986 David Jenkins, once the fastest man in Europe, was indicted in San Diego and eventually sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for trafficking synthetic steroids from Europe and Mexico and making a killing on the US sporting market.
Jenkins admitted that his clients included youngsters who were not concerned by long-term harm. “They come,” he said, “from a gym environment, where a muscle mentality pervades and creates a demand for bigger bench presses, bigger squats. But they would rather not take a long-term approach. They want steroid McDonald’s.”
Go back even further to Menzies Campbell, once a Scottish sprinter, now the leader of the Liberal Democrats. He once held the British 100m record and tried to introduce a bill to criminalise the use of anabolic steroids. He said he had first become alarmed about drug taking at the 1966 European athletics championships.
Forty years on, only the names of drugs and the appliance of science have changed. The cheats, the dopes, the liars are still running.
