media_artricles :: 2015

Fearing for the future

The races and the times are coming thick and fast.

Local track and field fans hardly had time to digest Deon Lendore's impressive 44.41 clocking to retain his US collegiate 400 metres title on Saturday before 19 year-old Machel Cedenio put that run in the shade with his 44.36 in the Cayman Islands on Saturday night.

Those are times to truly be excited about. But my attention was also attracted by another story from the track and field world.

At the Jamaica International Invitational meet a couple weekends ago, Asafa Powell, back from his drugs ban, stopped the clock in the 100 metres in 9.84. And commenting on the reception he received on home soil, Powell said this: "Being here and getting this reception from my people is just overwhelming. Just to come out here and give them their money's worth and just for them to show their appreciation, no regrets."

Powell's agent Paul Doyle added: "You could hear from the crowd and you could almost feel his elation. With everything that he has been through, and we have all been through as a team and for Jamaica to see one of their heroes go through what he had to go through, I think it lifted everybody."

Doyle's comments would suggest that a great injustice had been committed against his athlete. And perhaps those in the 25,000-string crowd felt the same way, given their "overwhelming" reception of big Asafa.

For the record however, Powell had initially been suspended for 18 months by the Jamaican authorities after testing positive for a drug called oxilofrone at the 2013 Jamaica national trials.

Powell and club mate Sherone Simpson both blamed the infringement on their new trainer, physiotherapist Christopher Xuereb who had introduced the supplement Epiphany D1 to them, which as it turned out, contained the banned drug. Powell later appealed the suspension for what was considered a minor offence and his ban was reduced to six months.

Why the Powell story of last week intrigued me was because of the public reaction, especially seeing that Trinidad and Tobago also has an elite athlete just recently returned from a drug suspension in sprinter Kelly Ann Baptiste.

What kind of reception would she receive when she steps onto a local track again?

I don't expect ostracism. People want to believe the best of their people, and rightly so. To a point. But one also gets the impression that the average man is more interested in his favourites not getting caught rather than whether they are cheating or not. In these times, expediency is a greater virtue than honesty.

Following this train of thought, I picked up "Rough Ride" again.

It is the story of a now retired Irish professional cyclist of the 1980s called Paul Kimmage, currently a respected writer on the sport whose exposure of the drug culture in cycling from his own experiences made him a pariah; in his words the "Salman Rushdie of the cycling world."

"Rough Ride" was a fascinating read not only because of the writer's frankness, but because of how starkly it illustrated the moral dilemma that modern-day athletes face.

Feel Kimmage's anguish here: "It was during my first Tour de France in July 1986 that I faced the dilemma which would scar my professional life. Although I had witnessed abuse of drugs on a number of occasions after joining the professionals, I tried to block out the fact that you could break the rules in this sport and get away with it. For six months I convinced myself that I could still reach the summit without recourse to a syringe, but everything changed during that first Tour de France. For eight days the race was everything I had envisaged in childhood: I was the best-placed rider on the team and performing better than at any other stage in my life. But then, on the ninth day, I was knackered. My batteries were completely flat, With 14 stages still to race, I had a decision to make....The biggest decision of my life. Did I want them re-charged?

"It was a cruel moment and one that many sportsmen face in many other sports...On the Tour's ninth day, sport betrayed me. I wasn't prepared to take drugs to further my career in the sport..Not blessed with any great natural talent, for me it was always going to be a case of sink or swim. On the tour's ninth day, I shelved my ambition and began to drown."

This clean cyclist eventually succumbed and used amphetamines during one race. Memory and time did not permit me to pinpoint the exact details of his momentary slip for the purpose of this piece. But that passage to me sums up the challenge that faces any professional trying to play by the rules in his or her discipline.

The playing field is hardly ever level. So like Kimmage, you either shelve your ambition or join the game.

As often as I write about this subject, I am conflicted; not about how wrong it is to cheat; but as to how to view the offenders. The ones who are caught are reaping what they have sowed; but the pressure placed on them to win medals and break records makes some of the righteous indignation spouted afterwards by the critics sound hypocritcal. The sporting world has, by the win-at-all-costs culture it has fostered, created an environment that encourages cheating. Too often, it is a case of cheat or lose.

That is the world into which young Cedenio and Lendore are so smartly sprinting.

I fear for them.

garth.wattley@trinidadexpress.com

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