Bad Sports, Part VII—Red Handed

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This final installment in the “Bad Sports” series chronicles the actions of those athletes who simply got caught. There are plenty of reasons, plenty of rationalizations, plenty of explanations, plenty of excuses that quickly follows any doping test that delivers positive results . . . but, sometimes, it’s dead simple: an athlete cheated, and testing procedures exposed them. Those are the times when a perpetrator gets caught red handed. Sport history is full of their stories, and it’s interesting (though off-putting) to observe those drug-cheats achieving levels of notoriety that they never would have earned in their athletic careers.

International Track and Field has earned a regrettable reputation for winning performances delivered by athletes who resorted to performance enhancing drugs, though a number of highest-profile cheats have been caught and punished. Ben Johnson was infamously disqualified from the Olympic 100 meters after testing positive for an anabolic steroid. Observers might’ve suspected this revelation, since Johnson is said to have set a personal record in the bench press just days before the Olympic final. Marion Jones ultimately admitted to her use of steroids—and her involvement in the Balco Scandal—that rocked the sports world. Jones also served some prison time for having lied under oath to a Federal Grand Jury.

International Swimming has long been looked upon as a murky pond of drug cheats. East Germ swimmers dominated Olympic and World Championship events for over a decade. But when their government collapsed—and the money supporting East German drug programs dried up—that dominance, and those athletes, quickly disappeared. Having evidently learned nothing from the uber-secretive East German drug program, at one point the entire Chinese swimming team was disqualified from international competition.

Major League Baseball has been a source of far too many disappointing revelations about the tactics of beloved players: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire , Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, and a whole host of heroes and Hall of Famers.

Professional Cycling continues to suffer the highest-profile record of doping, with the ultimate revelation of years-long and professionally-systematic doping efforts of disgraced champion, Lance Armstrong (and virtually everyone around him).

Cross-country skiing is just one of many sports that has suffered with its history of athletes behaving badly. Finland’s Harri Kirvesniemi won six bronze medals in Olympic events, and eight medals at World Championships, though it was his victory in the relay at the 2001 World Championships that would be his downfall. After that race, his test results proved that he had ingested hydroxyethyl starch (HES), a banned substance that increases blood volume. Kirvisniemi and five other Finnish racers (Jari Isometsä, Janne Immonen, Mika Myllälä, Milla Jauho and Virpi Kuitunen) were disqualified. The team’s head coach, Kari-Pekka Kyrö, and three officials in the Finnish ski association were also identified and suspended for their role in the conspiracy. Kirvesniemi’s subsequent legal testimony also led to his conviction for perjury after he lied about his knowledge of prior doping in skiing. Evidently, he had seen a lot . . .

Johann Muhleg (ESP) was disqualified after winning three gold medals in Salt Lake City in 2002. Viewers of the races said they that any educated observer could tell that Muhleg was juiced. In this case, Muhleg’s positive test was for the red blood cell booster, darbopoetin. His tempo was other-worldly, his pacing was manic. He skied like a man who had no limits to his endurance, no fear of fading.

Salt Lake also saw the Olympic disqualifications of Russian skiers, Olga Danilova and Larisa Lazutina who were disqualified (like Muhleg) for their use of darbopoetin. The years in the early 2000’s seemed to indicate that drug testing had caught up to the drug-cheating strategies of unscrupulous athletes and organizations. But the headlines have been eerily silent in recent years, peppered only with occasional announcements of lip balms carelessly applied, and tainted beef mistakenly eaten, and asthma inhalers innocently over-used. Are testing strategies finally deterring those who would otherwise seek unscrupulous advantages? We hope so . . .

Cross-country skiing is one of the most taxing of endurance sports. It’s no wonder that athletes and coaches discovered that certain drugs provided a boost: more speed, more power, greater endurance, speedier recovery. Our sport has been tainted by steroids and EPO, by wholesale cheating on the part of the Russian Federation, and by underhanded strategies undertaken by whole host of Scandinavians. There is simply so much at stake—athletically, politically, financially. It comes as no surprise that individuals and organizations would resort to extreme measures in order to win. But that’s simply not in line with the principles on which the Olympic Games were founded. The pervading hope, then, remains that competitions in the upcoming Olympic Winter Games of Milan-Cortina will be fair and untainted, that the best performance on the day will be rewarded, and that audiences will believe that they’ve seen competitions run legitimately and honestly.