Olympic Games face credibility problem

A year to go to the Olympics and, right on cue, the spectre of doping rides back into town.

Positive tests and the outlandish excuses that are their corollary are like bad comedians: always available for anniversaries and birthdays. And so with Tokyo now less than 12 months away, maybe it was inevitable that, amid all the hopes and dreams, sport’s dark side should reappear.

The first time I went to a Games, at Sydney in 2000, I hadn’t even got out of the airport before the first doping scandal broke. Syringes and pools of urine had been discovered in one of the arrivals lounges. A group of weightlifters had catheterised themselves there in a pre-emptive attempt to avoid positive tests. That was the Games of Marion Jones and CJ Hunter. Not much has changed.

Last week, it was revealed that yet another gold medallist from London 2012, an Uzbek wrestler, had been exposed as a drugs cheat after re-analysis of his stored samples.

He became the 60th athlete to be disqualified from those Games after the event. We so wanted London to be the cleanest. Politicians issued meaningless vows that it would be. Now it looks as if it was the dirtiest.

And the stories keep coming. Some of them are breathtaking in their shamelessness. Some of them are as squalid as those pools of urine at Sydney Airport. Some of them suggest a kind of complicity and defeatism in the governing body of a particular sport that makes you think the war on drugs has been lost. And some of them are heartbreaking.

A few weeks ago, a Scottish athlete called Luke Traynor was notified that he had tested positive for a metabolite of cocaine. The cross-country and half-marathon runner was devastated by the findings but took full responsibility for them in a statement last week.

He has not had a spectacular career. He is 26 and getting close to his prime but most people have never heard of him. His test result probably ensures most never will. He admitted he had made ‘an incredibly stupid and uncharacteristic mistake’ by taking the drug. ‘I live a sporting lifestyle to compete,’ he said.

“Athletics is my passion. It’s all I think about and it’s what gets me out of bed each morning. I am yet to come to terms with the fact that I have ruined this for myself with one senseless act.”

Traynor is not a cause celebre. Far from it. He made an error and he will pay for it, probably with a two-year ban. There is no particular reason to feel sorry for him, although his contrition and his admission of guilt distinguish him from the majority of those who litter the sporting landscape with their failed drugs tests and faux protestations of innocence.

But if sport is going to punish someone like Traynor and shatter his dreams, then the least we can expect is that it treats all of those who transgress in the same way.

It would be reassuring if that were the case. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Unfortunately, sport has some rules for some and other rules for others. Some sports punish drugs cheats. Others try to protect them.

Boxing got itself in a tangle last week when it was suggested Dillian Whyte had failed a drugs test before his clash with Oscar Rivas but was allowed to fight anyway. The full facts of that case are yet to emerge but the use and regulation of performance-enhancing drugs in boxing has particularly dangerous and obvious potential repercussions. Two boxers died as a result of injuries sustained in the ring last week.

We were also treated last week to the thoroughly unedifying spectacle of swimming’s ruling body, Fina, coming to the defence of convicted drug cheat Sun Yang after two of his rivals, Australia’s Mack Horton and Britain’s Duncan Scott, refused to share a podium with him after he had won gold in separate races at the world championships.

Sun, who was banned in 2014 after failing a test, was racing at the world championships in South Korea despite a member of his entourage taking a hammer to vials of his blood that had been taken by a tester last September. The Chinese star was later cleared, by Fina, of committing a doping violation over the smashed vials because he had not been ‘properly notified’ about the test.

Sun was allowed to race in South Korea despite the testing furore and the fact that the World Anti-Doping Agency will now challenge Fina’s ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in September.

None of that has stopped Fina siding with Sun against Horton and Scott, who was warned for ‘inadequate behaviour’ because of his podium protest. Inadequate behaviour? Isn’t that beautifully ironic. Inadequate behaviour for protesting against the triumph of a drugs cheat racing under the shadow of another suspicious episode. Inadequate behaviour for taking a stand for clean sport. Inadequate behaviour for making a gesture that says enough is enough.

Inadequate behaviour for saying sport is sick of being defiled by cheats. Inadequate behaviour for saying what the rest of us think: that we are bored of watching spineless governing bodies going the extra mile for drugs cheats, covering up missed tests, hushing up failed tests, looking the other way when bad things happen.

Horton and Scott should be celebrated as heroes, not sanctioned. They should be lauded for having the courage to stand up for what they believe in and for drawing attention to the farrago in their midst. Fina’s response to their actions merely shows how out of touch swimming’s governing body is with the general public.

The Olympic Games are still something to be cherished but only a fool would claim they are not under threat. They are facing a credibility problem: because of the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs, there are too many sports where it is hard to believe what you are seeing and, once that happens, the sport is dead.