Healthy outlook has the sport up and running again
A year ago this weekend inside the Reggie Lewis Center, you would have been excused if you thought you'd wandered into a pharmacological convention. The questions were all about designer steroids then, about human growth hormones and Modafinil, about EPO and insulin and who was using them and who wasn't. That was before Athens, though, before a clean US track and field team won a stunning 25 medals at Olympus, before all the whispering and finger-pointing shifted to baseball, which now is having the "annus horribilis" that the runners, jumpers, and throwers went through.
"Since Athens, we've been on a wonderful upward trajectory and the stories have been about the people," USA Track & Field chief executive Craig Masback was saying yesterday during the indoor national championships at The Reggie. "The year after the Olympics is always a year of celebration for the people who did well and a year of redemption for those who didn't."
For the sport, which was on the verge of being consigned to the muck pit with boxing and weightlifting, it has been a year of both celebration and redemption, especially on the American side. The medal haul in Athens was the best US showing since 1992 and it was done without the cheaters -- the Kelli Whites and Torri Edwardses and Kevin Toths -- who had cast a shadow on their teammates.
Not that there won't be some unpleasant headlines up ahead. Tim Montgomery and Chryste Gaines may yet be banned after the Court of Arbitration for Sport hears their appeal this summer and Marion Jones's name is sure to pop up when the BALCO trial begins.
But that's old business, now. The new business is on display this weekend -- the Battle of the Titans in the shot put, teenager Allyson Felix's emergence as the new sprint queen, the stacked women's fields in the 1,500 and 3,000, the flowering of Brookline's Jonathon Riley as a world-class distance runner.
Finally, the talk has turned back to what track is supposed to be about -- times and heights and distances. "It's nice that if you have a good performance now, you're not accused of doping," Salem's Jen Toomey said yesterday after defending her 1,500-meter title.
Last year at this time, the drug cloud hanging over the sport had grown so dark that Track & Field News, the clockers-and-watchers' bible, had put special notation marks in its ranking lists next to athletes who were facing suspensions. "In truth, the doping issue will never be behind us and should never be behind us," says Masback.
Not when a chemist can create a new steroid with a tweak of a molecule. Not when genetics labs can turn out a "Schwarzenegger mouse." But the suspicion that has been dogging too many of the sport's stars has abated, at least for now. "Everyone's optimistic that you'll continue to see amazing performances that are also clean," said Shayne Culpepper, after she won the women's 3,000 meters.
People inside and outside the sport were on the verge of giving up on that idea last year, when 10 US athletes, half of them national champions, tested positive for banned drugs. Could a clean team be good? Could a good team be clean? "There was a moment when the focus changed and it was at the Olympic trials," says Masback. "The athletes took the sport back."
Last year's television ratings on NBC were better than those for NBA regular-season games. All four of the Visa Championship Series indoor meets have been broadcast and the ratings for the Reebok Boston Indoor Games here last month were up 40 percent. "We are a sport that has an incredible ability to revive itself," says Masback, whose federation has gone from a $3 million deficit in 1997 to a $1 million surplus.
Nothing like a pile of medals and no scandals to get a sport back on its feet and in the good graces of sponsors, which track can badly use. "It's like night and day the way we're received now," reports Masback. "The welcome mat is out, people are calling us."
Only the feds and the US Anti-Doping Agency, it seemed, were calling a year ago, during the sport's winter of discontent. "In my event, it's always been about the doping, so I was used to it," said shot putter John Godina, who set a meet record (71 feet 7 1/2 inches) yesterday.
Yesterday, the story was about the terrific toe-to-toe among Godina, Reese Hoffa, Adam Nelson, and Christian Cantwell in the middle of the infield. For once, nobody was wondering who was juiced and who wasn't. This weekend, that's literally inside baseball.
