Olympic realities
Officials say Games may never be clean
BEIJING -- Twenty years after Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100-meter Olympic gold medal because of steroid use, and dozens of doping scandals since, Olympics officials are acknowledging the Games may never be completely clean again. Leading up to competition in Beijing, dozens of athletes tested positive for banned substances or suspiciously violated testing protocols, including several gold medal contenders. As sports leaders try to stay a step ahead of drug designers and new methods of cheating, they face long, if not impossible, odds restoring integrity to the Olympics.
“I’ve said that we could expect between 30 and 40 positive cases [during the Games],” said International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge. “That is the extrapolation of the figures from Athens…If we have less, we must be extremely glad because that will mean that there has been a deterrent effect.
“Am I disappointing that there is still doping? Of course, I am. I hate doping. But we have to be realistic. It would be wrong to be Utopians. Doping is to sport what criminality is to society and there will always be criminality in society.”
The first official doping case of the Beijing Olympics was announced earlier today when Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno tested positive for EPO. She could face a two-year ban from competition, as well as a ban from the 2012 London Olympics under new IOC rules.
Meanwhile, tempered expectations from sports governing bodies and testing agencies represent a philosophical shift in the ongoing fight against cheaters. Officials are focused on the deterrent effect provided by frequent testing and scientific advances in designer drug detection. In Athens, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) oversaw 3,500 drug tests and turned up 26 positive cases. In Beijing, the number of drug tests will increase to 4,500.
The top five finishers in each event and two randomly chosen competitors will undergo a combination of blood tests and checks for the presence of synthetic EPO, an endurance-boosting hormone. For the first time at the Olympics, there will be widespread testing for human growth hormone, or HGH. Scientists also will examine key hormone levels for other signs athletes have tampered with body chemistry to gain an advantage.
Additionally, samples will be kept for eight years, allowing officials to retest when scientists develop better methods of detection.
In large part, Olympic testing will be an extension of recent rigorous testing employed before the Games. Increased efforts by testers caught seven Russian female track-and-field athletes, the entire 11-member Bulgarian weightlifting team, a Danish mountain bike champion, an Italian fencer, American swimmer Jessica Hardy, and many others.
"Many countries made it abundantly clear that they did not want to send cheats to Beijing," said John Fahey, head of the Word Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA. "So, they have embarked upon a systematic testing regime in the months leading up to departure of their teams for Beijing. . . . I hope that in two weeks' time, when we walk away from here, we've seen results that have made a significant step in the way back to confidence and integrity in sport."
Drug testers surprised champion US sprinter Tyson Gay during a post-workout massage earlier this year. They asked for blood samples, and Gay eagerly obliged. When the 100-meter gold medal contender volunteered for a pilot testing program in advance of the Olympics, this was the type of rigorous and random testing he had in mind. Since doping scandals in recent years revealed some of the best US track-and-field athletes were cheaters, Gay wanted every opportunity to prove he was clean before Beijing.
"I definitely understand people questioning people running fast because we've had several track athletes busted for steroids in the past," Gay said. "I get tested whenever they want to test me. If it's six vials of blood one week, then again the next week, that's just the price I have to go through to make sure everything is OK."
Gay is far from alone in his mindset. With top sports officials acknowledging that they cannot eliminate drug-related cheating, that they are just hoping to deter and minimize it, elite athletes have sought extra ways to prove they compete honestly. One way for US athletes is the pilot testing program offered by the US Anti-Doping Agency. The program is limited to 12 American athletes, including Gay; record-setting swimming superstars Michael Phelps and Dara Torres; and Allyson Felix, two-time 200 meter world champion. The US Anti-Doping Agency sought the biggest names in track and field, swimming, and cycling to volunteer.
The program involves two weeks of blood and urine testing to establish a body chemistry baseline. After the baseline has been set, athletes are subject to any number of unannounced blood and urine tests. USADA chief executive officer Travis Tygart described the program as the most advanced and comprehensive in the world.
"The general climate in sports today creates an unfair environment where athletes, whether setting world records or competing at an older age, are all of a sudden accused of doing it by performance-enhancing drugs," Tygart said. "We want to do everything possible to take away that stigma for the clean athletes. We want to give athletes a testing platform that we all can have comfort in knowing they're actually clean. That's a dream of ours."
But less than a month on the job, Doug Logan, the new USA Track and Field CEO, is prepared for the possibility a US track athlete will test positive for performance-enhancing drugs. He knows well the pervasive doping culture that exists among track athletes. Disgraced sprinting icon Marion Jones is serving a six-month sentence for lying to federal investigators about steroid use. Logan recognizes sports leadership must do its part to protect honest athletes, taking a strong public stand against cheaters.
"I shouldn't have to go through that mental exercise, preparing for what I do if one of our athletes doesn't test clean," Logan said. "But I have a responsibility to think about these things given the environment we live in. . . . Doping exists, and it's going to kill sports as we know it unless we do something about it."
The seven Russian track-and-field athletes caught days before the Games are accused of tampering with urine samples. DNA taken from the urine did not match DNA taken from the athletes, prompting one Olympics official to call it a case of "systematic doping." Whether that proves true or not, urine tampering is a prime example of back-to-the-future cheating by athletes. Using someone else's urine to pass drug tests was first done roughly 40 years ago.
As athletes try to evade new drug tests, future doping scandals appear likely to involve either low-tech methods from the past or frighteningly advanced science.
Gene doping is on the horizon for the 2012 London Olympics, though its short- and long-term effects are still largely unknown. To alter themselves on a cellular level, athletes inject synthetic genes designed to either promote muscle growth or increase endurance. Since the synthetic genes blend easily with the athlete's DNA, it is impossible to detect gene doping without multiple muscle biopsies, which is not exactly practical when officials are already performing 4,500 tests during the Olympics.
"There is an expertise that makes us more effective than we ever were before," said Fahey, the WADA chief. "That doesn't mean to say that there aren't cheats out there still, or that there might always be cheats out there."
Gene doping, Fahey said, "may become something that enters the lexicon of doping in the days ahead, and we want to be there to pick it up and deal with it at an earlier stage. Much of what we do is about public health. At this point, we're thinking about the world's elite athletes. But to the point that this or any of those other drugs are taken, there is a risk to the health, sometimes the lives, of those who are doping."
Unfortunately, that is not a strong enough deterrent for some athletes seeking gold. If athletes are willing to risk their lives by using steroids or gene doping, it is easy to see why measures taken by sports leaders can only lessen, not eliminate, cheating. 