injuryupdate
21-10-2005, 01:22 PM
From The Australian - a bit of a worry if half of this story is true:
Soldiers need support in drugs war
By Wayne Smith
October 21, 2005
A SPORTS drug-testing official received a death threat two weeks ago.
So too did the head of a sporting federation, who took the threat seriously enough to resign to protect his family.
What was scariest about these revelations yesterday (AEST) by World Anti-Doping Agency boss David Howman was how casually he dropped them into his speech to the UNESCO general conference in Paris.
They surfaced in paragraph 13 of his 23-paragraph address, almost as an aside, a throwaway line.
Eyes tend to glaze over whenever worthy sports officials make solemn pronouncements about the war on drugs. But Howman isn't speaking metaphorically. He is in the front lines, he's seen the casualty lists and he knows how close this war is to being lost.
One side is fighting clean, the other dirty and, sadly, dirty athletes have been winning for a long, long while.
Jail-bound Balco boss Victor Conte would have us believe the war is all but over. He might have been wounded in battle and shipped off to a PoW camp but on his way out of court on Wednesday, having been found guilty of flooding the sports world with a previously undetectable steroid, he paused to warn the drug-fighters that they are losing the hearts and minds of wavering athletes.
"It is important to fully acknowledge that the current anti-doping programs are ineffective and this fact has contributed to the use-or-lose mentality that exists today," Conte said.
"Even the so-called gold-standard anti-doping programs designed for Olympic-calibre athletes are ineffective, let alone the more inept programs that exist in professional sports."
The world in recent times has become attuned to the concept of well-intended but un-winnable wars. And, of all places, Turin has become the Basra of the war on drugs.
As the countdown begins to next year's Winter Olympics there, the hardline Italian government is attempting to root out the cheats by steadfastly applying its own laws that have made sports doping a criminal offence, punishable under certain circumstances by imprisonment.
So there's a real prospect any drug cheat expelled from the Olympic Village next year might be pushed out the front gate and into the waiting arms of the carabiniere.
And try telling them the drug-testing laboratory made a mistake! The insurgents, however, are digging in and they have friends in high places aiding their cause.
Among them is Italian IOC member and Turin sports supremo Mario Pescante who fears it might not be a good look for Italy if the police suddenly abandon their defensive positions around the perimeter of the Olympic Village and instead launch raids on athletes' rooms in search of drugs and the cheats who use them.
"Personally I am opposed to sending athletes to jail for doping," Pescante said. "We need to apply the laws to suppliers and doctors, not athletes. Two-year sports bans are devastating enough."
How lame that sounds when even the judge who jailed Conte - by far the biggest supplier yet caught in the war on drugs in sport - almost pulled out her hair in exasperation that she could only send him to the slammer for four months.
And if Conte is right, the drug-testers are so far behind in the technological battle that the cheaters are not deterred in the least by a two-year ban and consider it an almost laughable punishment.
There are fifth columnists everywhere and defeatism is rife. Eddy Merckx, the five-time winner of the Tour de France - the same cycle race that another legendary winner, Miguel Indurain, once reportedly said could not be finished "only on lemonade" - has come out publicly in recent times to disagree with the zero-tolerance policy of fellow Belgian, IOC president Jacques Rogge.
Apparently Merckx is concerned that if such a policy is enforced, a lot of "sick" cyclists using banned "medication" would have to pull out of races.
"It's not a matter of doping or drugs specifically," Merckx claimed. "It's just a matter of making sure that the athletes are taking care of their health."
If you think Merckx is riding on a wobbly wheel, consider this rationale from World Cup skiing champion Bode Miller on why downhill skiers should be allowed to use the blood-boosting erythropoietin (EPO).
"I'm surprised it's illegal because in our sport it would be pretty minimal health risks and it would actually make it safer for the athletes, because you have less chance of making a mistake at the bottom and killing yourself," Miller said.
"You have to make four or five decisions every second in skiing, every turn. And when your brain starts to slow down, as if you're holding your breath for two minutes, it makes it damn hard to make those decisions."
From the sound of it, Miller's own brain may have been deprived of oxygen just a little too long. Maybe that's what comes of competing so often at high altitude. But it's comments like those that really do put sport on a slippery slope.
It's at times such as these that those soldiers still fighting the good fight need a morale boost. It would be nice to think UNESCO's adoption of the International Convention against Doping in Sport will help them stand a little taller and persevere a little longer.
What the convention does, as federal sports minister Rod Kemp outlined yesterday, is impose legal obligations on governments around the world to adopt the WADA code. Each government has to ratify it first, of course, and even if they do, there's then the small matter of enforcing it. Sadly, UN-sanctioned treaties don't exactly have the best track record in that regard.
But the cheats aren't fooling around any more. The death threats prove that. So it's about time the anti-doping forces got serious, too.
The Australian
Soldiers need support in drugs war
By Wayne Smith
October 21, 2005
A SPORTS drug-testing official received a death threat two weeks ago.
So too did the head of a sporting federation, who took the threat seriously enough to resign to protect his family.
What was scariest about these revelations yesterday (AEST) by World Anti-Doping Agency boss David Howman was how casually he dropped them into his speech to the UNESCO general conference in Paris.
They surfaced in paragraph 13 of his 23-paragraph address, almost as an aside, a throwaway line.
Eyes tend to glaze over whenever worthy sports officials make solemn pronouncements about the war on drugs. But Howman isn't speaking metaphorically. He is in the front lines, he's seen the casualty lists and he knows how close this war is to being lost.
One side is fighting clean, the other dirty and, sadly, dirty athletes have been winning for a long, long while.
Jail-bound Balco boss Victor Conte would have us believe the war is all but over. He might have been wounded in battle and shipped off to a PoW camp but on his way out of court on Wednesday, having been found guilty of flooding the sports world with a previously undetectable steroid, he paused to warn the drug-fighters that they are losing the hearts and minds of wavering athletes.
"It is important to fully acknowledge that the current anti-doping programs are ineffective and this fact has contributed to the use-or-lose mentality that exists today," Conte said.
"Even the so-called gold-standard anti-doping programs designed for Olympic-calibre athletes are ineffective, let alone the more inept programs that exist in professional sports."
The world in recent times has become attuned to the concept of well-intended but un-winnable wars. And, of all places, Turin has become the Basra of the war on drugs.
As the countdown begins to next year's Winter Olympics there, the hardline Italian government is attempting to root out the cheats by steadfastly applying its own laws that have made sports doping a criminal offence, punishable under certain circumstances by imprisonment.
So there's a real prospect any drug cheat expelled from the Olympic Village next year might be pushed out the front gate and into the waiting arms of the carabiniere.
And try telling them the drug-testing laboratory made a mistake! The insurgents, however, are digging in and they have friends in high places aiding their cause.
Among them is Italian IOC member and Turin sports supremo Mario Pescante who fears it might not be a good look for Italy if the police suddenly abandon their defensive positions around the perimeter of the Olympic Village and instead launch raids on athletes' rooms in search of drugs and the cheats who use them.
"Personally I am opposed to sending athletes to jail for doping," Pescante said. "We need to apply the laws to suppliers and doctors, not athletes. Two-year sports bans are devastating enough."
How lame that sounds when even the judge who jailed Conte - by far the biggest supplier yet caught in the war on drugs in sport - almost pulled out her hair in exasperation that she could only send him to the slammer for four months.
And if Conte is right, the drug-testers are so far behind in the technological battle that the cheaters are not deterred in the least by a two-year ban and consider it an almost laughable punishment.
There are fifth columnists everywhere and defeatism is rife. Eddy Merckx, the five-time winner of the Tour de France - the same cycle race that another legendary winner, Miguel Indurain, once reportedly said could not be finished "only on lemonade" - has come out publicly in recent times to disagree with the zero-tolerance policy of fellow Belgian, IOC president Jacques Rogge.
Apparently Merckx is concerned that if such a policy is enforced, a lot of "sick" cyclists using banned "medication" would have to pull out of races.
"It's not a matter of doping or drugs specifically," Merckx claimed. "It's just a matter of making sure that the athletes are taking care of their health."
If you think Merckx is riding on a wobbly wheel, consider this rationale from World Cup skiing champion Bode Miller on why downhill skiers should be allowed to use the blood-boosting erythropoietin (EPO).
"I'm surprised it's illegal because in our sport it would be pretty minimal health risks and it would actually make it safer for the athletes, because you have less chance of making a mistake at the bottom and killing yourself," Miller said.
"You have to make four or five decisions every second in skiing, every turn. And when your brain starts to slow down, as if you're holding your breath for two minutes, it makes it damn hard to make those decisions."
From the sound of it, Miller's own brain may have been deprived of oxygen just a little too long. Maybe that's what comes of competing so often at high altitude. But it's comments like those that really do put sport on a slippery slope.
It's at times such as these that those soldiers still fighting the good fight need a morale boost. It would be nice to think UNESCO's adoption of the International Convention against Doping in Sport will help them stand a little taller and persevere a little longer.
What the convention does, as federal sports minister Rod Kemp outlined yesterday, is impose legal obligations on governments around the world to adopt the WADA code. Each government has to ratify it first, of course, and even if they do, there's then the small matter of enforcing it. Sadly, UN-sanctioned treaties don't exactly have the best track record in that regard.
But the cheats aren't fooling around any more. The death threats prove that. So it's about time the anti-doping forces got serious, too.
The Australian