Whenever a big-name player gets hit with a doping charge, the quality of the public discussion, such as it is, plummets. Baseball could have been heading for a reasoned and cooperative effort to gauge and address its doping problem. Then A-Rod’s results leaked, and the issue got summed up as a front-page headline in the New York Post reading “A-Hole.” Not that anybody turns to the Post for nuance.
What’s overlooked amid the invective is the shallowness of the science underlying the anti-doping crusade. It’s not uncommon for a chemical to be placed on the prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) – the bible of athletic sin – only to be reclassified as innocent a few years later, after scores of athletes have been branded as cheaters for taking it. (That happened with Sudafed and anti-baldness pills.) Nor are laboratory standards particularly consistent: Whether an athlete’s sample is branded clean or dirty sometimes depends on which of WADA’s 34 official labs did the test.
Even worse is the standard of legal procedure in many doping cases. Last week, the federal judge in the Bonds trial tossed out several drug tests that were to be used against him because prosecutors can’t verify their authenticity. (Prosecutors are appealing her order.) Under the rules for WADA disciplinary hearings, which apply to Olympians and other world-class athletes and in which evidence standards are as loose as Manny Ramirez’s uniform, those samples would almost certainly be accepted with no questions asked. WADA, which designed its procedures so its prosecutors would have the upper hand at every step, almost never loses a case, big surprise.
Some might argue that such harsh measures are necessary to eradicate the scourge of doping. But the truth is just the opposite.
Unless we define with clarity what’s acceptable and what’s not, and unless we demand from our doping police the same pristine integrity we demand from their targets, sports will never be free of doping issues. Innocent athletes will be stigmatized, and those who step foolishly or briefly over the line to give the people what they want – more homers, more baskets, harder hits at the snap of the ball – will be pilloried.
I dunno your entire post seems ridiculous since every high profile case I think think of recently (arod, bonds, vinokurov, marion jones, giambi etc) have all been busted for using products that were clearly steroids that they new they were wrongly using to gain a competitive advantage.
i know the guy who made bond’s drugs, he posts on bodybuilding.com all the time, patrick arnold, he mades steroids for bonds, marion jones, etc, it is no secret.
I’m sure there are some athletes out there getting pegged as dopers that didn’t do anything (maybe floyd landis is one?) but using bonds as an example makes you seem extremely naive, or ignorant, or insane.
It’s not uncommon for a chemical to be placed on the prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) – the bible of athletic sin – only to be reclassified as innocent a few years later, after scores of athletes have been branded as cheaters for taking it. (That happened with Sudafed and anti-baldness pills.)
First off, I know this is an article in the LA Times, and not your own editorial.
wasn’t sudafed re=-classified because they stopped making it with pseudoephedrine? I mention this because the ‘drug’ is still banned, but the product no longer has that drug.
just a thought. i don’t know about the anti-baldness pills he is referring to, and i’m not interested enough to look it up.
The point of the post is that until the anti-doping agencies are held to the same standards of proof as most legal systems and the athletes are held to we won’t make progress in anti-doping and clean athletes will always be doubted.
The OPs post was an excerpt from a MSM newspaper, which probably has very little perspective on the sports and athletes we follow. From their point of view, the anti-doping effort is flawed.
Looks pretty clear to me. What do you want? 3D models of the molecules themselves? If you’re asking for like blood concentration limits, forget it, because that’s providing a manual for how to beat the test.
unless we demand from our doping police the same pristine integrity we demand from their targets, sports will never be free of doping issues.
Sports will never be free of doping issues until athletes stop doping.
My opinion is that WADA is totally outgunned. They only catch those who screw up their doping protocol, or who get ratted on. Athletes with the proper resources have nothing to worry about.
You do make a valid point–the vast majority of the cases we read about are high profile athletes with really clear doping violations. I can’t remember his name, and this was in one of the 3 races: Milano-San Remo, GdI, or TdF (I just know I remember it this past spring/summer), but one guy got knocked out because he had 14-16 too many ppm of his asthma inhaler. The limit is either 200 or 250 ppm. I don’t know if you have ever an inhaler , but that could easily have been a an extra puff when the bottle is low and stops working quite right. Even Ligget and Sherwin lamented how crappy it was for the poor guy to serve a 1 year ban for a minute mistake.
My point is, these standards do leave some athletes screwed because they are simply human. There have been bystanders attacked in what really is a witch-hunt. And I believe the press and public have made it a witch hunt by presuming guilt until proven innocent.
I also want to applaud you for your sage commentary. Aside from renewing my faith in public discourse, you have done a great deal to renew my faith in the worth of this particular forum.
I will post a more detailed reaction to your comments, but I’ll need a while to ponder the finer points you posited.
A positive test is not, repeat *not, *the only way to be busted (read: found guilty beyond reasonable doubt) for steroids or other peds. How many 34yr old men do you know with growing feet?
how do you get that entered into evidence in a court of law? What’s the proof?
The only real way to prove it is with blood and urine samples and an strict testing protocol and chain of custody on the samples.
If you take a step WAY back from it all, which is probably where that LA Times guy is coming from, it all seems so silly and laughable. Imagine if law enforcement in your town, or NASA, or your bank operated this way?
It’s not uncommon for a chemical to be placed on the prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) – the bible of athletic sin – only to be reclassified as innocent a few years later, after scores of athletes have been branded as cheaters for taking it. (That happened with Sudafed and anti-baldness pills.)
First off, I know this is an article in the LA Times, and not your own editorial.
wasn’t sudafed re=-classified because they stopped making it with pseudoephedrine? I mention this because the ‘drug’ is still banned, but the product no longer has that drug.
You do make a valid point–the vast majority of the cases we read about are high profile athletes with really clear doping violations. I can’t remember his name, and this was in one of the 3 races: Milano-San Remo, GdI, or TdF (I just know I remember it this past spring/summer), but one guy got knocked out because he had 14-16 too many ppm of his asthma inhaler. The limit is either 200 or 250 ppm. I don’t know if you have ever an inhaler , but that could easily have been a an extra puff when the bottle is low and stops working quite right. Even Ligget and Sherwin lamented how crappy it was for the poor guy to serve a 1 year ban for a minute mistake.
My point is, these standards do leave some athletes screwed because they are simply human. There have been bystanders attacked in what really is a witch-hunt. And I believe the press and public have made it a witch hunt by presuming guilt until proven innocent.
I assume you are defining busted as “going to jail”. I am not. I am using busted in place of guilty. I am saying there is very, very little doubt that Bonds in fact used despite the fact that he may have never tested positive. The tests are FAR from perfect. There is no positive test for marion jones, tim montgomery, dwain chambers, regina jacobs, kelly white, roger clemens, mark mcguire, jan ulrich, michael rasmussen, richard virenque, bjarne riis and dozens more household names. The problems with the tests include not being able to detect EPO in the system for more than 48 hours, not being able to detect previously unknown steroid isomers (ex: Balco’s THG), drastic differences in the results produced by different labs (Floyd L), producing occasional false positives, busting people for sudafed and the list goes on. A positive test is NOT the only way to prove guilt and a positive test does not prove absolute guilt.
Miguel Tehada is likely to go to jail for lieing to federal investigators about juicing… and I don’t think there is a positive test for him out there.
This is a quote from Dwain Chaimbers:
I was sat at home massaging The Cream, which is the drugs masking agent, into my arms when the knock on the door came.
The Cream leaves a white residue, taking about an hour to disappear and smells a little bit like burnt almonds. I don’t remember a feeling of panic as I calmly walked to the door, but the residue on my arms was clearly visible as I was wearing a sleeveless vest top.
I opened the door and an official-looking man spoke His words chilled me to the bone. We walked into the lounge; the tube of THG lay on top of the television and the faint smell of almonds permeated the air.He had a masking agent on top of his TV and on his body with testers in his home to collect his urine. NO POSTIVIE!!! Because it was a previously unknown substance. You can’t test for what you don’t know exists.
There is a difference between having the right to arrest someone and having proof that they committed a crime. And a positive drug test does not absolutely proove guilt. I am willing to venture a guess that there are more people who have returned false positives than there are 34 year old men with growing feet.
Since the testing and enforcement with regards to PEDs and athletes is so screwed up, the court of public opinion is the only one that matters.
99% of the time, the public gets it right.
What a clown. He is just desperately trying… too hard.
The Rodriguez case only caused some sort of hysteria in the rainbow press, the public didn’t really flinch at all.
(come on, give him a break, he appologized and all!).
Talk about being removed from reality.
I am giving the author the benefit of the doubt that he just wants to stir the pot.
Otherwise one would have to assunme that journalism in SoCal is still not connected to the rest of the free world.
Wonder if we can blame this on Al Gore again?
you don’t get it. The whole thesis behind the article the OP linked to is that you CAN’T use busted in place of guilty. Not according to the rule of law. There can be no doubt, because doubt never enters the conversation… it’s not subjective, it’s a DEFINITE objective fact that Player X used PED Y. Until we get to that point the system will not work.
I agree with you about the players/athletes you mentioned, but this is not about whether or not they use: it’s about whether or not there is a deterrent to using, which as the article stipulates, there is not because there are too many holes in system; and as you stipulate, it is very easy to dope without getting caught, ala Marion Jones et al.