Left field

Drugs no help in surfing, says world champ

World surfing champion Kelly Slater is happy to abide by new doping regulations being implemented in his sport but he doubts whether performance-enhancing drugs would make anyone surf better.

Surfing’s image has always been clouded by images of wild lifestyles, of cashed-up athletes treading a fine line between partying and performing.

While the modern professional surfer is a super-fit athlete, the Association of Surfing Professionals still wants to clean up the sport for good.

Slater, speaking at the launch of a world surfing tour that will have its first series of formalised drug testing this year involving standards prescribed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), said he had no problem with the tests.

“Doesn’t bother me,” Slater told Reuters. “I actually don’t know that the performance-enhancing issue applies to us so much. Surfing is a lot of decision making and skill. It’s not just based on speed and it’s not just based on strength.

“I don’t know that if someone takes a drug it’s going to make them win a heat, whereas if a guy is running round a track and he wants to go as fast as he possibly can, a drug probably can make him go faster. I think he probably can cheat. Surfing is a little different.”

The new ASP Anti-Doping Policy will test for both illicit and performance-enhancing substances. Offenders face a minimum one-year ban from the tour.

Armstrong re-retires, says no way back this time

It’s been a sad week in sport in some ways, with two modern greats announcing their retirements with immediate effect.

Admittedly, we knew long ago that we’d already seen by far the best of both Ronaldo, who called it a day on Monday, and Lance Armstrong, who announced on Wednesday his “retirement 2.0″.

Armstrong first quit the sport in 2005 after racking up a seventh successive Tour de France victory, an incredible achievement by any standard. The man who survived testicular cancer that had spread to his brain and lungs, undergoing coruscating courses of chemotherapy, gave us a story that was truly inspiring.

He returned to the sport in 2009, finishing third in his first year back and 23rd in 2010, his last attempt at the race.

I covered the Tour de France for Reuters in 2001 and saw him make it three in a row. He was under a huge amount of scrutiny over doping even then, with many people simply refusing to believe his achievements could possibly be coming unaided.

He has never had a positive test, though and has consistently denied ever taking performance enhancing drugs. “They can keep looking,” he told reporters in Australia last month. “If you’re trying to hide something, you wouldn’t keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.”

Back in 2001, I recall writing that Armstrong had made some headway in his battle for more than grudging respect from Europe. He spoke French and Spanish to the media and fans and was careful not to sound boastful about his achievements, even though he knew full well just how much better he was than his two great rivals that year, Jan Ullrich and Joseba Beloki. If the people didn’t love him exactly, the mood was maybe sort of heading that way.

Contador provisionally suspended, cycling holds its breath

Tour de France winner Alberto Contador returned an “adverse analytical finding” for clenbuterol following an analysis of a urine sample taken during an in-competition test on the second rest day of July’s race, the International Cycling Union said on Thursday. 

The concentration was “400 time(s) less than what the antidoping laboratories accredited by WADA must be able to detect,” the UCI said in a statement. 

“In view of this very small concentration and in consultation with WADA, the UCI immediately had the proper results management proceedings conducted including the analysis of B sample that confirmed the first result.” 

Contador, who won his third Tour this year, has been formally and provisionally suspended as is prescribed by the World Anti-Doping Code and the case will require “further scientific investigation before any conclusion could be drawn”.

The Spaniard has blamed food contamination and riders at the road world championships in Australia urged people to reserve judgement until the investigation is completed.

Whatever the outcome, the issue of doping has once again overshadowed action on the road, with this story casting a pall over events in Geelong, where Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara won a record fourth time trial title on Thursday.

Where does cycling go from here?

Gatlin’s return throws up 100 metres quandary

If Justin Gatlin, back in action this week after a four-year doping ban, were to line up alongside Jamaican Usain Bolt in the 2012 Olympic 100 metres final in London, who would American fans want to win?

Having served his time, is former world and Olympic champion Gatlin worthy of his place or, as some have suggested, should all convicted dopers be forced to pin a massive asterisk on their vest to remind the world of how they made it to the top?

British athletics went through the same process with the return of Dwain Chambers and though British Olympic Association rules prevent him or any other convicted doper representing Britain in the Olympics, he has raced in European and World Championships.

As Chambers lined up in the European Championship final last week, former team mate and now TV analyst Steve Backley said that despite wanting to see a British medal he did not really know whether he wanted Chambers to do well.

Chambers was hardly alone in Barcelona as several other convicted dopers were in action, some of them winning medals.

As with Chambers, the organisers of Europe’s premier athletics meetings are keeping Gatlin at arm’s length but the promoters of a low-key Estonian meet were happy to have him back.

Rules support loss of medals for Cox’s U.S. relay team

Rules in place at the time of the 2004 Olympics make it increasingly likely all members of the U.S. women’s 4×400 metres relay team will lose their gold medals because of last week’s doping suspension of alternate Crystal Cox.

Rule 39.2 of IAAF Competition Rules 2004-2005, which governed athletics participation at the Athens Games, clearly calls for the loss of medals if a team member violates anti-doping rules. 

“Where the athlete who commits an anti-doping rule violation … is a member of a relay team, the relay team shall be automatically disqualified from the event in question, with all resulting consequences for the relay team, including the forfeiture of all titles, awards, medals, points and prize and appearance money,” the rule, which applies to alternates, states.

Cox was suspended for four years and all of her results since 2001 were disqualified by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for using prohibited anabolic agents and hormones over a period from 2001 through 2004, USADA said.

Cox later denied using performance-enhancing drugs, saying in an email to family and friends she was innocent but signed the sanction because she did not have the financial resources to fight the charges. 

She ran in the preliminary round of the 4×400 but not the final, where the team of Monique Henderson, Monique Hennagan, Sanya Richards and Deedee Trotter won gold. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it was studying Cox’s case and considering setting up a disciplinary commission.

McGwire the latest in line for smooth rehabilitation

America knows how to ‘do hype’ and the Stateside public lap up a good scandal but when it comes to cheating by use of performance enhancing drugs, the appetite for mass media coverage seems to vanish.

At the end of 2009, there wasn’t a website or newspaper in the States, whether celebrity gossip, high-brow politics or sports-obsessed that wasn’t delivering real-time updates on the infidelities of a golfer. America couldn’t get enough of the Tiger Woods story which, in the end, consisted of little more significant than a sorry list of rather mundane affairs.

When it comes to drug use, however, the response is far more restrained. Just a day after Mark McGwire, after years of avoiding questions, finally confessed to using steroids, including during 1998 when he broke the single season home-run record, already America was ‘moving on’.

The tone was set by Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig who within hours of McGwire’s ‘confession’ interview was welcoming the news. “I am pleased Mark McGwire has confronted his use of performance enhancing substances as a player … this statement of contrition I believe will make Mark’s re-entry to the game much smoother and easier,” he said.

McGwire’s confession is timed with his return to the game as hitting coach with his old team the St. Louis Cardinals. The New York Times is already sure that there won’t really be any problem with a confessed drugs cheat playing a role in the game next season.

“People consistently overestimate the impact of fallout from a steroid confession. The image of howling fans and nosy reporters has little basis in reality. It might happen in a bad movie or television drama, but it does not happen in real life,” wrote Tyler Kepner and he is right. At least when it comes to American sport.

Kepner notes that America’s drug cheats are often forgiven and reintegrated into baseball with remarkable ease.

Five defining moments from a decade of sport

As the decade draws to a close, we pick five sporting moments which have defined the last 10 years.

1. Cathy Freeman lit the Olympic flame at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, a Games set in a country which embraces the outdoor life and punches well above its weight in most sports.

Aboriginal Freeman, who had suffered racial prejudice as a child, symbolised the optimism of a new start in a new century for a bustling immigrant nation. She went on to surmount suffocating pressure by winning the 400 metres gold, Australia’s only track gold.

2. A tattered U.S. flag, rescued from the rubble of the World Trade Centre which had been destroyed in the attacks on the United States in the previous year, was carried into the stadium during the opening ceremony for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

There had been serious doubts that the Games and the subsequent World Cup in Japan and South Korea would go head after the events of 9/11. In the end both took place without incident albeit at enormous security costs.

3. Zinedine Zidane, the supreme soccer player of his generation and scorer of two headers in France’s 1998 World Cup final win over Brazil, emerged from international retirement to help take his team to the 2006 final against Italy.

Agassi’s confessions could have knock-on effect for Serena

Andre Agassi’s decision to open his soul and tell the world he took drugs and then hoodwinked his governing body, the ATP, into believing his failed drugs test in 1997 was a mere mistake could not have come at a worse time for Australian and Wimbledon champion Serena Williams.

While Agassi has been condemned by players and pundits alike for tainting the image of his sport, tennis authorities have come under fire for not investigating the matter thoroughly and believing Agassi’s lies.

One of the accusations against the ATP was it brushed the whole episode under the carpet as it could not afford to ban one of its biggest draws on the men’s tour.

In light of the Agassi debacle 12 years ago, Williams knows she could be in for some stiff punishment from the International Tennis Federation (ITF) even though the cases are so different.

Williams is in many ways the face of women’s tennis as she has won more grand slams than any other active player – her tally currently standing at 11 – and is also the world number one.

But her foul-mouthed rant at a lineswoman during her U.S. Open semi-final defeat against Kim Clijsters has left the ITF, who run the four grand slam tournaments, facing a real dilemma.

Should they make a stand by banning one of the sport’s biggest stars from taking part in one or more grand slam tournaments? Or should they simply hit Williams with a larger fine than the $10,500 she was handed at Flushing Meadows so that tournaments do not suffer financial consequences by the no-show of the biggest names in women’s tennis.

from The Great Debate UK:

Gates closing for commercial partners in sport

- Professor Simon Chadwick, Director, Centre for the International Business of Sport, Coventry, UK. The opinions expressed are his own. -

This summer’s Tour de France was truly historic: the race finished without anyone having returned a positive dope test. Monumental! In a sport seemingly beset with drug problems, professional cycling appeared to have turned the corner, started over, seen the error of its ways, cleaned up its act etc.

Some weeks later however, it was back to "situation normal" when Mikel Astarloza, winner of Stage 16 in this year’s race, tested positive for EPO use. To be honest, the only real surprise about this was that the media singularly failed to refer to the test result as "dope-gate" or some such other gating scandal.

Yet gates elsewhere were swinging this summer like those on a disused farm caught in a tornado. The world of sport witnessed scandals ranging from "crash-gate" to "blood-gate" and beyond (even to situations where women were apparently men – gender-gate?). Crash-gate was the most serious of the summer's attempts at self-implosion, according to some possibly the most serious sporting scandal of all time.

Indeed, there was a sense amongst certain people that the 2008 F1 Grand Prix in Singapore will serve as a headstone on the grave of sporting credibility: we can no longer trust in or rely upon those involved in sport. Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have admitted their guilt and apparently done the decent thing, but others may well be complicit too.

Just how could something so brazen, so dangerous, have remained secret for so long amongst such a small group of people? From whistle-blowing, to organisation culture, the use (and abuse) of power and the basis on which teams compete, the whole saga has been a sad, pitiful, mangled mess of managerial, organisational and commercial issues.

Blood-gate was a lot less controversial than the Renault fiasco, if for no other reason than it was essentially a domestic drama and wasn’t therefore played out in the glare of international publicity. Moreover, while the likelihood of a physically painful outcome was much greater in the F1 case, Harlequins willingness to feign a physically painful outcome was at the heart of bloody matters down at The Stoop.

Let’s identify those who’ve doped to make the booing fair

British sprinter Dwain Chambers played the role of pantomime villain at the world championships, suffering some pretty half-hearted boos from some of the crowd unhappy at his doping past and his bid to overturn the British Olympic Association’s bylaw banning all convicted dopers from the Games.

Chambers, who served a two-year ban from 2003 and confessed to his “crime”, has also been absent from most of the big European meetings this year thanks to a decision of the cartel of organisers not to invite him.

Nobody likes a doper and, even having served the feeble two-year ban, a cheating athlete should not expect a warm welcome on his return.

He should, however, expect something of a level playing field and Chambers might have been interested to watch Steve Mullings line up for the 200m final having qualified fourth-fastest.

Mullings also served a two-year ban, from 2004, but kept a much lower profile in the aftermath. There has been no booing from the German crowd.

Likewise, Chambers’ British team mate Carl Myerscough, who served a two-year ban 10 years ago, goes about his business unruffled and was politely clapped when introduced to the crowd before this week’s discus final.

Here’s an idea: make all convicted dopers, once they’re back after their bans, enter the stadium wearing a traditional dunce’s cap, with the D now standing for doping. That would make everyone aware of who’s done what.