Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
You’d probably have to go a long way to find someone who would seriously argue that doping should be allowed in sports. We love to see skill, great tactical plays, dazzling technical ability, an underdog beating the odds or a favourite flexing their superiority.
Cheating, in any form, evokes the opposite emotions. A football team could have dominated a game from start to finish but a dive to win a penalty at 5-0 up will be what’s talked about. We despise the idea that someone would do anything other than compete in the most upstanding manner possible, to bring our game into disrepute.
The pitchforks are already out for Shayna Jack as she came out this week vowing to clear her name of the doping charges. As soon as a failed drugs test is mentioned we are all too quick to end an athlete’s career without really looking at the facts of the case.
Anything to do with professional sport is a bit of a strange career path, most athletes are retired by their mid to late thirties and whilst there are cases of late bloomers, like Enric Gallego, if you haven’t made it by your early 20s there’s little to no hope for you. Whilst athletes are in a privileged position it seems as though there’s not much sense in the way certain doping issues. A two year ban from the sport is the maximum sentence for minor or accidental misdemeanours when failing a drugs test but that is a long enough period to turn a young promising athlete in to yesterday’s news.
Those who are already established can come back from a ban and still do okay. Kolo Toure had a successful career both before and after his charge but it can also ruin an athlete’s chance at making it in their profession.
It should be remembered that it is also the way these people earn a living, we associate professional athletes with the glitz and glamour lifestyle, insanely rich, driving expensive cars and owning ridiculous houses but in truth this is a tiny percentage. Most are living ‘normal’ lives away from their sport. They have families they are supporting and bills to pay. It would be difficult to justify taking away someone’s job in many lines of work for a mistake at 20 years old.
That’s not to defend all drug cheats. Max Hauke was literally caught hooked up having a blood transfusion in his changing room and he deserves every day of the ban he received. When it is premeditated it is harmful to the sport, its participants and its reputation.
Sometimes though I feel common sense is not applied enough. Examples are made of people who don’t truly deserve to be made examples of. Take Ben Hill, a professional cyclist who tested positive for a banned substance and was barred for two years. He was 22 at the time he got the news and by his own admission lost key years of his career which ultimately cost him a place at the top.
His story, which was accepted and verified, was that a teammate had given him a caffeine powder very similar to a legal substance and that they were unaware that version was banned. When Hill found out, he immediately tried to make up for the mistake he had made yet no mercy was shown. I believe he should be stripped of any results achieved during the time of taking the substance but to essentially end the man’s career over a mistake like that, I feel, seems harsh.
Add to this a number of flaws within the drug testing system as it is. Sun Yang is currently taking a lot of heat for a drugs test last year which he decided against taking and on the face of it, that seems a pretty guilty thing to be doing. On further inspection, though, it doesn’t seem as unreasonable. Yang didn’t outright refuse the test; his blood was in the vial. However, on finding out that three of the officials present weren’t qualified to take samples, he destroyed his. When it is essentially your whole life on the line, is it that ridiculous to want somebody qualified taking your blood sample? Of course he could have voluntarily taken another test and put the suspicion to bed but it seems harsh to vilify him when he’s not been proven guilty.
I don’t know if swimmer Jack is telling the truth when she says that she had no idea how the banned substance entered her system but it’s someone’s job to listen to the evidence and decide just that. Australia’s swimming body has done her no favours in the way they handled the whole situation, that’s for sure. All I hope is that if she’s found to have been unaware or simply made a mistake that some common sense prevails and we don’t see another young athlete with their career stripped. If she’s guilty of premeditating the whole thing, however, I hope she knows something other than swimming.
