Rusedski scenario a nightmare for tennis

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Greg Rusedki, the latest of a long list of high profile athletes to fail a drug test, has proclaimed his innocence and mounted an argument which has created a great deal of difficulty for tennis doping officials. Rusedki has indicated his defence revolves around the hypocrisy of tennis letting off anywhere from a handful to at most dozens of players for testing positive for traces of the anabolic steroid nandrolone, because allegedly they may possibly have been distributed by an official ATP trainer (although there appears to have been very little substance to this allegation that has been released by the ATP). Read Rusedski's argument at Foxsports. If it is true that inadvertent doping did occur and multiple players were excused, then tennis needs to come completely clean, including naming the players and also the trainer(s) involved, and when the tainted tablets were distributed. It is obviously not sufficient to excuse every player over a certain time period without definite evidence of inadvertent use, because users of illegal substances may be let off. It is highly unlikely that a huge proportion of the tennis elite is deliberately using nandrolone, a known banned substance, but much more plausible that many are using a designer steroid, though to be undetectable but which metabolises within the body to leave small traces of urine nandrolone. Rusedki's only justification for leniency is that "others got away with it, why not me?" and his position fails to take the moral high ground as anyone looking for credibility should stand down from tournament play until an investigation is complete. Tennis itself loses further credibility that it would allow someone under a steroid cloud to compete in a Grand Slam event, although administrators in this sport with an ostrich-like mentality may argue that if Rusedski won the Australian Open and then was suspended it would only look as 'bad' as any of the major athletics events in which the winner needed to subsequently hand back their gold medals. The fact that Rusedski has the fastest serve ever recorded, gargantuan bodily and facial features and a bad temper only serve to add further suspicion about his guilt. Read the British press reaction and previous coach Pat Cash's comments. The Rusedski fiasco comes on the heels of the Rio Ferdinand farce, showing how poorly administrative bodies in major sports still handle drug issues.

[injuryupdate]

The decision by an independent drugs panel to acquit tennis player Greg Rusedski of a doping violation is, in the opinion of this website, a flawed one which opens a huge can of worms. Read more about the verdict at Foxsports. Up until this time, it has been presumed that an athlete is fully responsible for any substance that he or she ingests, making the excuse of "I have no idea how this anabolic agent appeared in my system" invalid. In the cases involving tennis players, including Rusedski, the possibility has been raised that perhaps some of the nutritional supplements handed out by ATP trainers may have been contaminated with nandrolone. The problem is that chemical analysis of these supplements to date has shown no trace of nandrolone. Somehow, the lawyers for the accused tennis players have twisted the burden of proof from the player having to accept responsibility for all substances in his/her body to the association having to completely prove that no tablet that an employee handed out in the past was ever contaminated. The obvious problem with accepting this precedent is that players have had illegal performing-enhancing steroids in their systems, and no one is getting punished. The ATP can't suspend a trainer or sue a nutritional company, because no contamination has ever been found. And given no contamination has been found, the burden for having the illegal substances in their systems should fall back to the players. Obviously every player caught with an anabolic steroid from now on will try this argument - "yes, I've tested positive, but you prove that you didn't spike my drink". This argument can't be accepted (or else drug testing becomes a farce) and when tribunals stop accepting it in other sports, this tennis decision will be exposed for the farce that it is. As to what has cause the tennis positives (which have all been for very low-level doses of nandrolone), we are none the wiser. It is doubtful that any player would knowingly take nandrolone, but possible that there is a supplier of laced tablets touting them to ATP players as 'safe'. Since Rusedski et al. have been handed the 'get-out-of-jail-free' cards, they are hardly going to now blab about who has been supplying them with anything on the side.*Have your say on this issue at the Forum.