Pubdate: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2000 The Toronto Star Contact: One Yonge St., Toronto ON, M5E 1E6 Fax: (416) 869-4322 Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Forum: http://www.thestar.com/editorial/disc_board/ Author: Rosie DiManno OLYMPIC CHAMPS FASTER, STRONGER . . OR JUST HIGHER? SYDNEY -- It's Getting So Only The Losers Are Credible That makes the also rans those who finish way up the track and way down the standings the only athletes worthy of our unadulterated trust. Which includes a whole lotta Canadians. And who'd have thought that choking would turn out to be a redeeming quality? These Olympics, winding down towards the last weekend of competition, have been singularly splendid from an organizational point of view. The venues are top drawer. The volunteers are friendly to a fault. The entire atmosphere in Sydney has been joyful. And, yes, the competition has been breathtaking. But who do you believe anymore? Which athlete who mounts the podium can be looked at through unsquinty eyes and admired for the purity of their heart, the honesty of their excellence? Not A One Not even the heroic Cathy Freeman or the magnificent Marion Jones or the wildly charming Massimiliano Rosolino. Gold medalists all, Olympic champions all, but tarnished ever so faintly by all the cheating and conniving and just plain stupidity of these Games. It's the innocent who will carry the burden of duplicity. Because we'll never know, not for certain. Who's clean? Who's dirty? As the testing mechanisms for performance enhancing drugs become more sophisticated, so too do the masking agents and subterfuges that some athletes embrace in their maddened lust for glory. Maybe that's the only way to compete these days. Maybe it should be no syringes barred and let the competitors do what they will to transform their bodies into high performance machines. It's their funeral and their pockmarked faces, their shrunken genitals, their brain tumours, their sterility, their moustaches on women and breasts on men. Florence Griffiths Joyner, resplendent in gold at the '88 Olympics, dies suddenly at age 44 with steroid use believed to be a contributing factor and still these keenly health conscious athletes treat their bodies like toxic waste dumps. Such a gamble to take, when most of these medallists won't even be remembered a month from now. It's a fleeting fame for the majority of Olympic champions and the roar of the crowd rapidly subsides. Then comes the ever after part and deals made with the devil will exact their due. Some Australian papers and maybe even those back home, dunno have taken to publishing a daily booted athlete table, along with a by country medal tally. These are the parallel anti Olympics, a running tally of the devious who've been outed by their own urine and blood, not to mention the Uzbekistan coach who was fined $10,000 for attempting to bring 15 vials of human growth hormone through Sydney Airport. As of last night, the anti doping patrol had conducted 323 out of competition urine tests, 760 in competition tests, and 227 EPO blood tests since Sept. 2. The Hall of Shame list includes: a Latvian rower, Iranian boxer, three Bulgarian weightlifters (including a female gold medalist), two Romanian weightlifters, a lifter from Norway, one from Taiwan. Canadian equestrian Eric Lamaze got done for cocaine pre Olympics and was kept off the squad even when an arbitrator ruled in his favour on the grounds of "exceptional circumstances." And let's not forget the 27 Chinese athletes who took themselves out of the Games before the Games began, as did American world shot put champion (and husband of 100 metre champion Marion Jones) C. J. Hunter. Meanwhile, scandalized Linford Christie, good for gold at Barcelona in the 100 metres, tries to sneak around the athletes' village and training venues in order to handle the runners he coaches. Such surreptitious behaviour is required because Christie like other drug positive athletes on the banned list is persona non grata at the Olympics. None of these individuals are worthy of our sympathy, probably. But surely one might spare a kind thought for Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan, who was stripped yesterday of her gold medal in the individual all round event after being found guilty of taking a banned substance, pseudoephedrine. The 17 Year Old Had A Cold She went to her team doctor for relief. He gave her a prescription, just as he'd done for five or six other members of the Romanian team who'd also come down with the sniffles. This is a physician specializing in the care of athletes and, presumably, well aware of which drugs are proscribed. None of Raducan's teammates tested positive. With Raducan, it's believed the drug registered more strongly in her urine because of her smaller size. This drug, by the way, is not on the International Gymnastic Federation's list of banned drugs but does appear on the IOC's no no list. So much for consistency. The IOC, rightly or wrongly wrongly, in my opinion has taken a zero tolerance position on all its banned drugs. (In practice, this is something less than zero, since much depends on the quality of legal representation an athlete can afford. A group of lawyers in Sydney have offered their professional services free of charge to all athletes, for any purpose, but the likes of the aforementioned C. J. Hunter, who's not even an actual Olympian for these Games, can apparently afford to hire himself "family friend" Johnnie Cochran.) That means the punishment is no different for a banned cold tablet, an anabolic steroid or a growth hormone. It might do well to remember the athlete's oath that was taken by Australian runner and former gold medal Hockeyroo Nova Peris Kneebone on the night of the opening ceremonies: "In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams." We'll never know how many athletes had their fingers crossed behind their backs at the time. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. - --- MAP posted-by: John Chase