injuryupdate
25-07-2004, 10:39 PM
Good article from:
Richard Hinds - Fairfax - July 24, 2004
Forget all the mock outrage of the media and the feigned surprise of officials and politicians. On the eve of the Athens Olympics, the real tragedy is not that Australian athletes are being accused of taking banned drugs. The tragedy is how ludicrously bad they seem to be at it.
In the United States, investigators are unravelling the complex BALCO case which links some of the world's biggest stars with elaborate and systematic doping. There are accusations of state-of-the-art production of mystery drugs that can't be detected, and sophisticated distribution networks that make tracing the source and users of these drugs almost impossible. It all sounds glamorous and, given the US is such a power on the track, there is growing suspicion that it got the job done medal-wise.
Meanwhile, down here we have brown paper packages tied up with string lobbing on the doorsteps of athletes that may or may not contain performance-enhancing drugs. So badly concealed are they, these parcels don't get to their intended users until they've been through the hands of a dozen customs agents.
Then, apparently unfamiliar with the basics of masking agents - I mean, what are we teaching these people at the AIS? - the recipients of these packages spend their time scrambling over the back fence every time someone knocks on their door, assuming they are about to be randomly tested by secret agents from the Australian Sports Drug Agency.
On a global scale, Australia's drug infractions just always seem so low rent. Which is why - as self-serving as it might seem - the Prime Minister's optimistic belief that "Australia is rather freer of drug-taking sport than most other countries" rings true.
Not because there aren't plenty of Australian athletes who wouldn't like to be juiced up to the eyeballs before taking the blocks or lifting the bar or pinging the pong or whatever it is they will do in Athens. It's just that, for some reason, Australians don't seem mechanically adept or culturally attuned to the whole drug thing. We have neither Europe's efficiency nor America's can-do attitude to cheat and cheat well.
This is, of course, a belief that ranks in naivete with Tim Webster's famous assertion that he didn't believe Samantha Riley could have been taking banned substances because he had stood beside her once and she seemed like a nice girl.
At the time, we suggested Tim should be dispatched to the Sydney Olympic Village where he could stand beside athletes like a beagle at the airport luggage carousel and decide whether or not they were drugged up. High-handed Sydney Olympic officials rejected this idea, choosing instead to waste millions of taxpayers' dollars on supposedly high-tech testing equipment that, it now seems possible, had already been outdated by the sinister pharmacologists at BALCO. So, whose idea seems stupid now?
However, lest it be suggested this column be put on beagle duty in Athens for the seemingly dim-witted assertion that Australians aren't culturally attuned to drug taking, there is an equally dim-witted explanation.
Drug taking at its highest level is as much about politics and economics as it is about sport. This was patently obvious during the days of the old Eastern Bloc machine, a period that not only darkened the annals of Olympic history by providing a succession of bogus gold medallists, but which provided an endless stream of jokes about bearded female shot-putters from Bulgaria.
Back then, drug use in sport was simply an extension of our beliefs about good and evil. The evil commies were using drugs to beat our heroic, clean-living athletes.
However, the BALCO case has forced us to consider a different scenario - that systematic doping may not just be the province of discredited eastern dictatorships. Rather, now - and perhaps even while we were pointing an accusing finger at those cheating Ruskies - that the economic might of the US was producing its own systematic form of drug cheating. One not approved by an elected government but by the new form of non-democratic dictator - the multinational corporation.
So, how does this remove Australia from the big picture of drug cheating? Well, while we might have a weightlifter smuggling a few tablets through customs and a few accident-prone cyclists who can't tell a growth hormone from a dietary supplement, on the whole, I think the PM might be right. We are freer of drug abuse than some countries. Not because our athletes are cleanskins, but simply because we are a global minnow at the fag end of the sophisticated world of chemical cheating.
Richard Hinds - Fairfax - July 24, 2004
Forget all the mock outrage of the media and the feigned surprise of officials and politicians. On the eve of the Athens Olympics, the real tragedy is not that Australian athletes are being accused of taking banned drugs. The tragedy is how ludicrously bad they seem to be at it.
In the United States, investigators are unravelling the complex BALCO case which links some of the world's biggest stars with elaborate and systematic doping. There are accusations of state-of-the-art production of mystery drugs that can't be detected, and sophisticated distribution networks that make tracing the source and users of these drugs almost impossible. It all sounds glamorous and, given the US is such a power on the track, there is growing suspicion that it got the job done medal-wise.
Meanwhile, down here we have brown paper packages tied up with string lobbing on the doorsteps of athletes that may or may not contain performance-enhancing drugs. So badly concealed are they, these parcels don't get to their intended users until they've been through the hands of a dozen customs agents.
Then, apparently unfamiliar with the basics of masking agents - I mean, what are we teaching these people at the AIS? - the recipients of these packages spend their time scrambling over the back fence every time someone knocks on their door, assuming they are about to be randomly tested by secret agents from the Australian Sports Drug Agency.
On a global scale, Australia's drug infractions just always seem so low rent. Which is why - as self-serving as it might seem - the Prime Minister's optimistic belief that "Australia is rather freer of drug-taking sport than most other countries" rings true.
Not because there aren't plenty of Australian athletes who wouldn't like to be juiced up to the eyeballs before taking the blocks or lifting the bar or pinging the pong or whatever it is they will do in Athens. It's just that, for some reason, Australians don't seem mechanically adept or culturally attuned to the whole drug thing. We have neither Europe's efficiency nor America's can-do attitude to cheat and cheat well.
This is, of course, a belief that ranks in naivete with Tim Webster's famous assertion that he didn't believe Samantha Riley could have been taking banned substances because he had stood beside her once and she seemed like a nice girl.
At the time, we suggested Tim should be dispatched to the Sydney Olympic Village where he could stand beside athletes like a beagle at the airport luggage carousel and decide whether or not they were drugged up. High-handed Sydney Olympic officials rejected this idea, choosing instead to waste millions of taxpayers' dollars on supposedly high-tech testing equipment that, it now seems possible, had already been outdated by the sinister pharmacologists at BALCO. So, whose idea seems stupid now?
However, lest it be suggested this column be put on beagle duty in Athens for the seemingly dim-witted assertion that Australians aren't culturally attuned to drug taking, there is an equally dim-witted explanation.
Drug taking at its highest level is as much about politics and economics as it is about sport. This was patently obvious during the days of the old Eastern Bloc machine, a period that not only darkened the annals of Olympic history by providing a succession of bogus gold medallists, but which provided an endless stream of jokes about bearded female shot-putters from Bulgaria.
Back then, drug use in sport was simply an extension of our beliefs about good and evil. The evil commies were using drugs to beat our heroic, clean-living athletes.
However, the BALCO case has forced us to consider a different scenario - that systematic doping may not just be the province of discredited eastern dictatorships. Rather, now - and perhaps even while we were pointing an accusing finger at those cheating Ruskies - that the economic might of the US was producing its own systematic form of drug cheating. One not approved by an elected government but by the new form of non-democratic dictator - the multinational corporation.
So, how does this remove Australia from the big picture of drug cheating? Well, while we might have a weightlifter smuggling a few tablets through customs and a few accident-prone cyclists who can't tell a growth hormone from a dietary supplement, on the whole, I think the PM might be right. We are freer of drug abuse than some countries. Not because our athletes are cleanskins, but simply because we are a global minnow at the fag end of the sophisticated world of chemical cheating.