Another international sports governing body has a huge drug scandal on its hands. This time it’s IAAF, which oversees track and field. If you are wondering why you should care — after all, who follows track anymore? — it is this:
You are naïve if you think that drugs went away after Lance Armstrong and Ben Johnson and Barry Bonds and Marion Jones and the rest of them; they continue to infest every arena in sport — baseball, track, cycling, swimming, professional wrestling (see the latest funerals) and most definitely professional football, which has gotten a free pass.
But they pass the drug tests, you say? No, they beat the tests.
If the latest revelations are correct, the IAAF has avoided the prosecution of drug users perhaps fearing that the sport cannot endure another scandal. The German radio/TV company, ARD/WDR, and the Sunday Times gained access to files belonging to the IAAF that contained the results for 12,000 blood tests for 5,000 athletes. The Times and ARD/WDR had the results examined by Robin Parisotto and Michael Ashenden, two of the world’s top doping experts. They determined the following:
One-third of the medals in endurance events at the Olympics and World Championships from 2001 to 2012 were won by athletes with suspicious test results. None were stripped of their medals.
More than 800 athletes recorded blood test results that the experts called “highly suggestive of doping or at the very least abnormal.” Ten medals in the 2012 Summer Games were won by athletes with suspicious test results. The experts called Russia “the blood testing epicenter of the world,” with more than 80 percent of the country’s medals won by athletes with suspicious test results.
Parisotto said some of the levels revealed by the tests were “downright dangerous” to the health of the athletes.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says it is “very alarmed” by the reports. Lord Sebastian Coe, who is a leading candidate to become the next IAAF president, says he wants a “robust response” from the IAAF. One of Coe’s platforms is to overhaul track’s testing program, which has been lax, to say the least.
The IAAF scandal follows on the heels of another scandal that broke earlier this summer when a number of former assistant coaches and athletes accused coach Alberto Salazar of putting his athletes on PEDs. He has been accused of giving runners testosterone, bringing AndroGel, vials and needles to training camp and mailing pills to an athlete in a hollowed out paperback novel.
Most of this Summer of Scandal has focused on the endurance races; specifically, blood transfusions and EPO, which boost the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. But there is reason to cast suspicions elsewhere. You don’t need test results to be circumspect about what is happening in the sprint events. To wit:
Justin Gatlin is the fastest man in the world this season. He has run a time of 9.74 for 100 meters. Only four men have ever run faster. He is 33 years old.
He was suspended from competition for four years, from 2006 to 2010, for flunking a drug test. That’s four years without a race during what should have been his prime years.
Tyson Gay has the sixth fastest time in the world this year. He won the U.S. championships without Gatlin in the field. He has clocked 9.87. He is 33 years old.
In 2013, he failed a drug test and served a year’s suspension.
Jamaica’s Asafa Powell has the second fastest time in the world this year. He has been clocked in 9.81. He is 32½.
In 2013, he failed a drug test and served a year’s suspension.
Sprinters are not supposed to run their best times when they are in their 30s. They have a short shelf life by any standard. And yet, 11 years after Gatlin won the gold medal in the Olympic 100-meter dash, he is running faster than he did in his youth and not by just a little. Gay and Powell are not far behind their own best marks.
That sprinters can produce such marks so late in their careers is enough to warrant suspicion, but then there are other red flags. For one thing, Gatlin, Powell and Gay spent significant time away from the sport, which is enough to kill a career. Then there is their drug history.
As if to put an exclamation point on the trend, Kim Collins, the 2003 world 100-meter champion from Saint Kitts and Nevis, ran 9.98 earlier this summer — at the age of 39. He reportedly flunked a drug test in 2002, but escaped punishment.
As one veteran track observer noted, if we are to believe these athletes are clean, then we are forced to believe they are getting faster than they were when they were both younger AND using performance-enhancing drugs.
Even if Gatlin, Gay and Powell have ceased drug use since their suspensions, some observers wonder if past drug use continues to boost performance years later. This seems highly unlikely. The life and potential benefits of any drug have limits, just as the physiological gains of training gradually dissipate once training has stopped.
Suspicions will be in the back of everyone’s mind when Powell, Gay and Gatlin meet Usain Bolt and the Jamaicans later this month at the World Championships. The Jamaicans have raised suspicions themselves for years. As noted here years ago, prior to the 2008 Olympics, Jamaicans had won only three gold medals in the 25 previous Summer Games. In the last two they have won 16 of a possible 28 medals in the men’s and women’s 100- and 200-meter dashes and 4 x 100 relay, including seven of 12 gold medals.
In the last five World Championships — the 2008 Olympics, the 2009 and 2011 World Championships and 2012 Olympics and 2013 World Championships — Jamaicans have claimed 38 of a possible 70 medals in the men's and women's 100, 200 and 4x100 — and 22 of 30 gold medals.
In 2013, Craig Reedle, the president of WADA at the time, visited Jamaica after serious gaps in that country’s drug-testing program came to light.
Track has a drug problem on its hands, but it’s foolish to believe they are the only sport with such issues.
Doug Robinson's columns run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Email: drob@deseretnews.com