Letters to the Editor
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Anti-doping and the Olympics
King--
You wrote that considering circumstantial evidence in doping prosecution is "probably a good thing".
Seriously?
On the surface it might seem this way, especially if you spend most of your time the big American sports where EPO and blood doping aren't common practice. But in other sports -- endurance sports where blood boosters make a BIG difference -- the efforts of the World Anti-Doping Agency look increasingly like a witch hunt.
I'm sure that there are plenty of dopers out there and they're definitely doing serious damage to their sports.
But then there's Tyler Hamilton of cycling, who may or may not have doped, but had a pretty good case that his positive test for a blood transfusion was marred by hasty science on the part of WADA labs. There's Dick Pound, Chariman of WADA, who has said that carefully vetted tests are meaningless because he knows doping when he sees it. There's the IOC saying they'll pursue a case against Austrian Nordic Skiers even though their initial round of tests came back clean. Sure they found doping paraphenalia, but who knows what was in those syringes, and who knows who was using them? And we have WADA threatening to add caffeine to the list of banned substances, in which case a career may be destroyed, literally, over a cup of coffee or chocolate bar.
Where do you draw the line? If an athlete has a breakout performance, will WADA say, "He's never been this good before. Even though his tests are negative, he probably doped, and we'll pursue the case."
This is nuts. Considering circumstantial evidence in doping prosecution is not "probably a good thing," it's a terrible, terrible thing. Tests should be well vetted, carefully conducted, and the results definitive. If you're positive, action goes forward; if you're negative, then you're clean.
Dopers undermine the credibility of sport, but an anti-doping agency that hounds athletes who, by all appearances, are innocent undermines not only sport, but the anti-doping effort itself.
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Re: anti doping
dbs: "anti-doping agency that hounds athletes who, by all appearances, are innocent"
i'm not sure that the austrian skiers are by all appearances innocent...what with the blood transfusion equipment, bag of blood, syringes, drugs, and the banned olympic coach. if this were a criminal trial, which in italy it may well become, a conviction may arrive based on this circumstantial evidence alone (look up "juventus doping" and you can find plenty on the subject); nevertheless, i suspect that they will conduct dna and other exams to see if they can determine who used the syringes for what.
my understanding of the tyler hamilton case is that he had one positive test thrown out on account of poor test management (at the olympics), and he tested positive again a month later in spain...correct me if i'm wrong.
you do raise a good point about where to draw the line on the WADA's investigatory practices, but if we're just going to take tests which show that 1 in 1200 athletes dope, then we might as well give up the fight against doping.
i think it is fair enough for the WADA and the athletes to argue their sides before an "unbiased" court (say, the Losanne Court of Appeals for Sports....they're swiss, they must be unbiased...)
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So what kind of proof would you like?
So, thanks to the crackdown by world anti-doping forces, we've gone from 1 percent of the tests coming up positive to 0.0083 percent [sic]. Problem solved! Glad we cleared that up.
King, a serious question now. Under what circumstances would you admit that doping is no longer a major problem in a sport? Obviously, having everybody pass their drug tests is not enough for you. What would do it for you? Twenty-four-hour, year-round video surveillance? Vulcan mind probe lie detectors? Extended torture sessions by agents of cooperative foreign governments?
I'm not taking the position that there is no longer any doping in Olympic sports, and yes I know the old saw that "absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence." But seriously, can these guys ever get out from under this shadow? For you, "less evidence of cheating" just implies "less effective enforcement." So on the day that there is zero evidence, I guess that will just prove to you that anti-doping efforts are 100% ineffective?
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Re: anti doping
I'm behind dbs on this one. If the drug testing program isn't working, then improve the tests! Don't stand behind an EPO test that everybody knows is flawed:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=38295
And don't make an example of the entire Austrian nordic team. As I said before in this forum: what if it turns out that ten, or five, or even two of the Austrian skiers were innocent? Aren't their rights important, too? Dick Pound and Jacques Rogge have been walking around saying "doping will destroy sport" so much that people are starting to believe it. Don't swallow the story that doping needs to be stopped at any cost. Because anti-doping could destroy sport, too.
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Best and worst Olympic commercials
For some reason the media-watch pundits didn't evaluate this year's Olympic-related commercials with the same "Passion" (get it?) as they do the Super Bowl ads. What were your yeas and nays, Mr. Kaufman et al?
One of my favorites was the one about "we want our children's dreams to come true" (kid at play - cut to grown-up kid performing Olympic sport). One of my least favorites was the "aging Baby Boomer" couple ice-skating with disastrous results.
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In defense of Bode Miller (sort of)
I'm not a big Bode fan, but I do think that people who criticize him for his failure to win Olympic medals are not too knowledgeable about ski racing.
Bode is a truly great skier who has dominated the World Cup and taken home several World Cup titles, which are in truth more meaningful than the one-shot Olympic victories. I'm not too crazy about his style of self-promotion -- I'm more a fan of the quiet, intellectual, workmanlike skiers in the Kjetil Andre Aamodt/Hilary Lindh mold -- but hey, Bode's got to earn a living, and self-promotion is the way he does it. The Olympics aside, his self-hype is pretty much justified, I have to grudgingly admit (see references to his World Cup record).
I also note that one of the greatest American skiers of all time -- and one of the greatest to ever ski on the World Cup circuit -- was Tamara McKinney. She never won an Olympic medal (she finished fourth in GS at Sarajevo, for example) and seemed to have a damn hard time even winning a World Championship medal. But, like Bode, she dominated the World Cup during her career, especially in the technical races. I don't think anyone ever gave her a hard time about not winning an Olympic medal, though she was the sentimental favorite of ski fans when she did compete in those high-profile races. Of course, she was always known as having a sweet and modest personality, so that's a big contrast with Bode.