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April 17, 2003
Cassandra Vindicated
In the 1970s and 1980s, whenever Western athletes would compete against their counterparts from the Soviet Bloc, American viewers learned to manage their expectations. Sure, our young athletes would almost always acquit themselves well. However, there was always the suspicion that atheltes from behind the Iron Curtain had a little extra in the gas tank. In public, their coaches would always talk about the superiority of their training techniques, something that was certainly the case when talking about the vaunted Soviet ice hockey program. But for the most part there was an assumption that any and all athletes from communist countries were using some sort of performance enhancing drugs. Later, as the Iron Curtain came down, we discovered many of those assumptions were true. But then again, it fit all too easily into our worldview: Commie athletes bad, use drugs to win; American athletes good and virtuous, stay clean and win honestly. Turns out we were wrong: Dr Wade Exum, the former USOC director for drug control from 1991 to 2000, has released more than 30,000 pages of documents to Sports Illustrated and the Orange County Register. For a number of years, Pound has complained vociferously about American hypocrisy over performance enhancing drugs, openly predicting that when the truth about American athletes finally came to light, the American public would be shocked. For years, he's been ignored, and today's news is a clear vindication of the work he's been doing. Between 1988 and 2000, 100 positive tests were administered to American athletes that won 19 medals in Olympic competition. The most embarassing revelation: that American Olympic hero Carl Lewis tested positive three times for banned substances at the 1988 U.S. Olympic Trials, but was still allowed to compete. Lewis later won two gold medals in Seoul Olympics, including one for the 100 meters where he was awarded the medal after Canadian Ben Johnson was disqualified for using steroids. Here's the link to the original Orange County Register story that broke yesterday. They've put together an impressive package, one that includes a basic Q&A on drug testing, as well as the evidence chain showing Lewis' positive test results from the 1988 Olympic trials all in PDF format. Sports Illustrated has more details, including the fact that U.S. Soccer player Alexi Lalas tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone to epitestosterone in his bloodstream. A few days ago, the New York Times submitted its coverage of Matha Burk's efforts to integrate Augusta National for consideration for a Pulitzer Prize. I hope somebody holds that spot for the folks at the Orange County Register. POSTSCRIPT: One clarification: a positive test for the use of a banned stimulant is generally considered to be a less heinous infraction than anabolic steroid use when it comes to the Olympics. And I don't mean to suggest that the American Olympic movement is the moral equivalent of the old East Bloc programs -- many of which fed performance enhancing drugs to athletes who didn't even know they were taking them. Nevertheless, the rules are the rules, and it seems clear the USOC regularly treated them with contempt. And that's something the American public ought to treat with contempt as well.
Eric
11:28 AM
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsRules may be rules, but I would be curious to know if the USOC actually banned athletes from competing in the late '80's for the same violations that Lewis, et al., were nabbed. A law that's unenforced might as well not be on the books at all. Posted by: at April 18, 2003 05:34 PM Post a commentThanks for signing in, . (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |