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Doping: Big-name positives
11/12/2006 18:34 - (SA)
London - The credibility of athletics and
cycling were called into question again in 2006 when the Olympic
100m champion and the Tour de France winner both tested
positive for elevated levels of testosterone.
Even though their events have long been associated with
performance-enhancing drugs, the shock and disappointment at the
downfall of Justin Gatlin and Floyd Landis reverberated around
the sporting world, not least because both had appeared to
herald a new era.
American Gatlin jointly holds the 100m world record of
9.77 seconds with Asafa Powell of Jamaica and many had hoped the
fledgling rivalry between the two 24-year-olds would take
athletics out of the dark days of the Balco scandal.
Landis had provided a fairytale victory in a Tour that had
threatened to become engulfed in scandal before it started when
nine riders, including 1997 winner Jan Ullrich and Giro d'Italia
champion Ivan Basso, were suspended by their teams because they
were implicated in a Spanish doping investigation.
"The image of your sport and right now your flagship event
is in the toilet and you've got to do something about it or the
risk is that your sport will be ignored by everybody,
marginalised by others and it won't be sport any more," World
Anti-Doping Association (Wada) chairperson Dick Pound said at the
time.
German Ullrich and Italy's Basso denied all allegations of
doping.
The Spanish Cycling Federation abandoned disciplinary
proceedings against all the riders in October and Basso, at
least, will be back in action in 2007 after joining Armstrong's
old Discovery Channel team.
But the 30-year-old Landis appeared to put valour back into
the Tour, producing an astounding comeback in the final mountain
stage a day after spectacularly cracking.
Speaking at the end of the three-week race, Tour director
Christian Prudhomme said: "Landis's performance not only left
its mark on the 2006 Tour, it also left its mark on the whole
history of the race."
He had no idea how prophetic those words would become.
On July 27, Landis's Phonak team announced he had tested
positive for excessive amounts of the male sex hormone
testosterone after his amazing victory on stage 17.
Possible ban
The second 'B' sample confirmed the result, leaving the
American facing a two-year ban and the ignominy of becoming the
first Tour champion to be stripped of his title.
After being charged by the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada),
Landis will make his case at a hearing of the American
Arbitration Association next year.
With the ink barely dry on the Landis headlines, world 100
and 200m champion Gatlin revealed on July 29 that he had
tested positive for testosterone or its precursors in April.
Gatlin, known for speaking out against drug use, had already
had his career threatened in 2001 by a positive test for an
amphetamine he took for attention deficit disorder. He was
reinstated early from that two-year ban.
"It is simply not consistent with either my character or my
confidence in my God-given athletic ability to cheat in any
way," Gatlin said in July.
The sprinter has been suspended for up to eight years
pending an appeal.
To add to the sport's woes, Gatlin's coach Trevor Graham was
indicted by a US grand jury last month on three counts of
making false statements related to steroid distribution.
Graham, who triggered the Balco scandal in 2003 when he
anonymously sent a syringe of the designer steroid THG to Usada,
has pleaded not guilty.
Jones cleared
More than six athletes Graham has coached have been
suspended for doping or tested positive for
performance-enhancing drugs, including sprinter Tim Montgomery.
One of Graham's former athletes, Marian Jones, who was
investigated in connection with the Balco scandal although never
charged, found her name being dragged into the mire again when
she gave an initial positive test for the banned blood-booster
erythropoietin (EPO).
Jones, the ex-partner of Montgomery, has repeatedly denied
taking performance-enhancing drugs and was cleared of doping in
September after her 'B' sample proved negative.
At February's Winter Olympics in Turin the presence of
banned Austrian coach Walter Mayer prompted the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) and police to raid hotels housing the
country's cross-country skiers and biathletes.
Ten athletes were tested for drugs and cleared after Mayer
fled the scene. He was later arrested when he crashed his car
into a police roadblock.
The fall from grace of some of sport's biggest names this
year gave IOC president Jacques Rogge cause for optimism in the
battle against doping.
"I think we are making progress because as you have seen a
lot of very famous athletes have been caught and that proves
exactly that the system is working," he said in September.
However, the year ended with the case of Pakistan cricketers
Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif highlighting inconsistencies in
the way different sports deal with doping offences.
The two bowlers were cleared by a Pakistan Cricket Board
appeals tribunal after initially being banned for testing
positive for the steroid nandrolone.
The tribunal ruled they had not had sufficient warning that
the supplements they were taking could be contaminated by the
steroid.
- Reuters
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