Muted media response to court ruling against life ban for drug cheats

MEDIA CORNER

with Clare Forrester

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Recently the international Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) struck down the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Rule 45, thereby clearing the way for many athletes, previously barred from competing in the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London this summer, participate.

In 2008 the IOC Executive Board instituted Rule 45, which stated that any athlete with an anti-doping suspension of more than six months would automatically be banned from the next Olympic Games following the end of the suspension. But on January 6, CAS ruled that the application of Rule 45 was invalid and unenforceable.

The news has triggered an ongoing media debate in European countries especially, and in the UK particularly. Even before the IOC Rule 45 came into effect, the British Olympic Association (BOA) had established its own bylaw in 1992 imposing a ban on any athlete who had received a doping suspension of more than six months from competing in the next Games. Although deemed unfair in many global circles, not the least of which was the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), the BOA has vigorously defended its position and continues to receive the support of the International Olympic Committee in so doing. In addition, Lord Sebastian Coe, chair of the London 2012 organising committee, who visited Jamaica last week to deliver the keynote address at the annual Racers Track and Field Club Awards dinner, and the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt have backed the BOA's stance. Lord Coe, who is said to be considering a run for the IOC presidency after the Games, has confirmed his support for the ban despite the ruling. "This is the easiest question for me to answer. I am unreconstructed on this. I'd have a life ban," he told journalists in the UK last week.

Although one of the main beneficiaries from this ruling is defending US Olympic 400-metre gold medallist LaShawn Merritt, a convicted drug cheat and the athlete responsible for challenging Rule 45, the verdict has attracted muted media response in his home country. The explanation provided for this so far is that track and field is not popular in the US and that it is only in an Olympic year, with the giant NBC network holding broadcast rights, that athletes there become the focus of attention. However, this explanation is hardly supported by existing evidence to the contrary. When Marion Jones was convicted and began her prison sentence, the media response was massive. But Jones's track career was over and Merritt is a strong gold medal prospect for the London Olympics.

It is not only in the US that the story has not to date received much media attention. Our scribes in Jamaica also have given it scant acknowledgement. Frankly, I am delighted that Jamaica's 400-metre sprinter Bobby Gaye Wilkins-Gooden, who recently completed a two-year suspension for doping, will also be given another chance to become an Olympian. The only obstacles she now faces are her contemporaries against whom she will compete at the Jamaican Championship for a place on the team to London. One of the most promising 400-metre prospects in 2008 when she qualified for the team and helped the 4x400 relay squad to a bronze, her career seemed set to take off. In 2009 she was named as a reserve for the IAAF World Championships team. A year later she was a semi-finalist in the 400 metres at the IAAF World Indoor Championships, before helping the 4x400m relay team to bronze in a national indoor record 3:28.49 when she tested positive for a banned substance. Now back home after serving her suspension, she has made her base at the famous Racers Track and Field Club.

Although every time a Jamaican athlete is on the receiving end of a guilty verdict the country gets a black eye, we have been fortunate to date in terms of our locally based athletes. Besides the JADCO fiasco that resulted in four of our finest being slapped unfairly with suspensions, and of course the unfortunate Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce incident, no other locally based athlete has so far been tested positive despite the rigorous in and out-of-season testing by JADCO.

There are several possible explanations for this. The more apparent one is that our athletes who remain on home soil are better protected from the claws of unscrupulous agents and coaches overseas whose driving interest is to enhance their own reputations on the backs of the athletes' success, and to ensure that their charges accumulate points for the universities and colleges that they represent. In that scenario, our athletes are more vulnerable to such pitfalls.

I do believe that the importance of our track and field athletes to advancing Brand Jamaica makes it imperative that we ensure that their security is airtight. There is no doubt that Jamaica has become the focus of attention at international games and that some amount of envy may be out there, and that they could be targeted. If we can't be beaten on the track then other means of so doing may be found. Hence, the need for us to take every precaution, including having our own cook(s) in London.

Given the WADA regulations against doping, there is no defence against a positive test, beyond a successful challenge against their testing procedure. The rules stipulate that it does not matter how the substance gets into the athlete's body, since they are totally responsible for what is ingested. WADA only has to establish that the substance is there. A second suspension of Yohan "Earthquake" Blake could spell curtains to his career.

When one considers that anyone can sabotage an athlete if sufficient protection is not provided, in any number of ways such as by squeezing a syringe containing a banned substance, or by sprinkling something into their food, then the need for the tightest possible security is called for.

The bad news for drug cheats is that the IOC, like the BOA, has not given up the fight. Besides suggesting that an appeal against the CAS ruling may be on the cards, the door has been left open for a different application of Rule 45. The recent position of the international court is that if the IOC still wants to exclude athletes who have been duly sanctioned for doping from the Olympic Games, they could propose an amendment to the WADA code. Such an amendment would create a situation in which an Olympic ban is part of a single sanction, and not seen as a separate sanction, unsustainable by law.

For now though, imposing the ban against people who have already served their sentence would be not only unpopular in global circles, but be seen as unfair and unjust.

antoye@gmail.com

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Muted media response to court ruling against life ban for drug cheats