Doping controls get teeth

PERSPECTIVE

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By Ari Pusa in Athens
     
      The disgraced former Finnish skiing coach Kari-Pekka Kyrö was right about one aspect of the doping fiasco at the World Nordic Skiing Championships in Lahti three years ago. It really WAS "amateurish tinkering around".
      It is only the Summer Olympics in Athens that have begun to reveal the true nature and global extent of doping amongst athletes. The flight of two Greek sprinters - one an Olympic champion - from the dope-testers is a story of far greater international resonance than the monkey business of six Finnish cross-country skiers and a bag of plasma expander.
      Furthermore, we have to assume that Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou have not succeeded in avoiding the testers’ glass phials purely through their own efforts. They have probably received support from above, which makes this a systematic, organised activity.
     
We are entering the second week of the games, and Athens has already seen a good many athletes actually getting bagged in doping controls. On Thursday the news broke that as many as seven weightlifters had failed to produce a clean sample.
      Though only two of those caught actually managed to take part in the Olympics (the positive results dated from IWF tests carried out before the games), the busts could even mean that weightlifting’s days as an Olympic event are numbered. Certainly the sport is teetering on the edge, since positives among weightlifters are a familiar occurrence. There were four in Sydney and as many as eleven at the 2003 World Championships in Vancouver.
      The International Olympic Committee has threatened to ban disciplines in which there is a massive doping scandal at the Olympics.
     
It fair to say, however, that it is unlikely a threat of this nature would be extended to track and field athletics.
      The former World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Secretary-General Harri Syväsalmi has a tough job on his hands in Athens in his current role as a representative of the 2005 IAAF World Championships. Syväsalmi is there to lobby the athletics crowd to put their house and their sportsmen and sportswomen in order, and to keep the pill-boxes and the syringes well out of reach.
      A big doping incident at next year’s games in Helsinki would be very bad news all round.
     
The setting up of WADA has brought some backbone and some vim and vigour into doping controls. Before the agency came into being, the fight against performance-enhancing drugs had as much bite as a toothless labrador.
      In Lahti three years ago, the Finnish skiers were purple with rage at WADA. It was like a red rag to them, a sporting Gestapo.
      Now the fear of WADA’s net seems to have spread to others. It is an open secret, though an unproven one, that doping has been commonplace in the United States.
      With the help of WADA, the U.S. has revamped its own doping controls. Particularly in track and field.
      To borrow a tired line from countless sportsmen: this is a good start to be going on with.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.8.2004
     
Translator’s Note: Since this article appeared in print, Greek weightlifter Leonidas Sampanis, who took the bronze medal in the 62-kilo category, was found to have twice the permitted level of testosterone in his urine sample. Sampanis, who also won silver in Atlanta and Sydney, was stripped of his medal on Sunday and told to leave the Olympics, amidst counter-claims that he was the victim of sabotage and that his drink was spiked. Sampanis was the ninth weightlifter to date to have been exposed in Athens, but the first medallist.
      He was not, however, the biggest fish to swim into the net. On Sunday it was announced that the Russian shot-putter Irina Korzhanenko had tested positive for the steroid stanozolol. Korzhanenko had comfortably won the gold medal on Wednesday with a throw of 21.06, more than a metre more than her nearest rival. It was not her first brush with the testers: she received a two-year ban in 1999 shortly after winning the Indoor World Championships. Ironically, in that competition Korzhanenko actually finished second, but was promoted to the gold medal after a fellow-competitor tested positive. She followed suit soon after, and lost her title, just as she has now been parted from her Olympic gold medal. WLM


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish skiers handed down two-year suspensions by Finnish Ski Association (23.4.2001)
  Four more skiers exposed in WADA tests (28.2.2001)

Links:
  Athens 2004 Official Site

ARI PUSA / Helsingin Sanomat
ari.pusa@sanoma.fi