Told you so
Posted: Friday, October 05, 2007 12:24 PM
Do me and everyone a favor the next time somebody suggests your sports hero may be a drug cheat: don’t blame the messenger.
You know who you are. You’re the people who wrote me nearly 20 years ago, outraged when I suggested that Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world records and Olympic golds in the 100- and 200-meter dashes were set with the help of her friendly neighborhood chemist. You’re the ones who screamed bloody murder when people first started to say that maybe Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and a lot of other baseball heroes were juiced. You’re the ones who threatened bodily harm – and still do – to people who persist in saying Lance Armstrong didn’t win those seven straight Tours de France without artificial assistance.
You’re enablers, every one of you. I confess I’ve been among you from time to time, but as I’ve gotten older and seen more, I’m not as likely to believe anyone who pushes physical accomplishment beyond physical limits.
One reason they do it is because we help them by defending them. We do that because we want them to win – for us and for their country – and we’re willing to suspend disbelief for the thrill in basking in their reflected glory.
We’re blatant hypocrites on the subject. We used to be dead certain that every East German champion was cheating – and we were probably right. But our champions were always clean – and we’re probably wrong.
The rest of the world reads about our drug scandals in football, baseball, the Olympics and other sports, and can’t be blamed for looking at the United States as East Germany’s successor at the top of the cheating chain.
The rest of the world is wrong though. It’s not limited to the United States; it’s everywhere. Just ask any fan of the Tour de France.
All of the cheats will never be caught. But we’ve got another one, and this time she’s admitting to it. Marion Jones has to lose her five medals from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, now that she’s fessing up. And doesn’t anyone who defended her back when she put on such a good show of professing wide-eyed innocence feel silly now?
“I never have, I never will,” she once told NBC. “I’ve been blessed with an incredible amount of talent . . . I don’t feel the need to take any performance-enhancing drugs.”
Sounds a lot like Floyd Landis, doesn’t it? And Barry Bonds – sounds just like him, too. Also sounds like Griffith-Joyner, who set the records for the women’s 100- and 200-meter dashes that still stand nearly 20 years later. They stand because testing is a lot better today than it was when she was cheating her way to the top. She never got caught, but there wasn’t anybody in the business who didn’t think she was more juiced than SunKist.
Flo-Jo took her secrets to a grave she arrived in far too young. Her early death may have been hastened by all the drugs she denied taking.
Jones took hers to a federal courtroom, where she made her admission in the hopes that federal prosecutors, who have her nailed dead to rights, would go easier on her.
And now she’s going to lose her medals.
The irony is that her 100-meter gold from 2000 will go seven years later to Katerina Thanou, the Greek sprinter who, along with her boyfriend, 200-meter world champion Kostas Kenteris, were caught in the act in Athens in 2004 and run out of the Olympics and their sport. Since Thanou wasn’t caught in 2000, she gets the gold, even though she was probably cheating, too.
It’s not entirely fair that Jones would be caught out by the courts and not the testers. But she took the stuff, knowing what she was doing, and she straight out lied to us. She’s already lost the millions she made cheating her way to the top. Now she’s losing her medals.
She didn’t deserve this disgrace; she earned it.
