Sex, drugs and alcohol: Excuses never far away when it comes to doping offences

“What did you make of that?” Al asked his wife.

“It smelt of Mist to me,” said Kay.

“No,” he said. “It was Southern Comfort.”

The news broke suddenly and travelled fast – 27 athletes pulled from China’s team on the eve of the Olympics, all suspected of failing a doping test.

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This being the eve of the Sydney Olympics, 24 years ago, when among the athletes withdrawn were the women’s distance runners coached by Ma Junren – better known as Ma’s Army – who’d first stormed the 1993 World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart (denying Sonia O’Sullivan two gold medals in the process).

None of Ma’s Army ever failed a doping test, Junren always insisting their only secret was fresh turtle blood and caterpillar fungus, although the endurance drug EPO, which since the early 1990s had come flooding into cycling and was known to be spilling over into athletics as well, wasn’t detectible until 2000 (on the same eve of those Sydney Olympics).

Later, some truths began to emerge, when according to Chinese state media reports released in February 2016, all nine of Ma’s Army in Stuttgart were forced to take “large doses of illegal drugs over the years”. A letter, signed by Wang Junxia and her eight team-mates in 1995, also detailed the regime of state-sponsored doping.

The latest news broke last weekend and travelled faster still, neatly captured in the simply damning headline in Saturday’s New York Times: “Top Chinese Swimmers Tested Positive for Banned Drug, Then Won Olympic Gold”. That same story was also reported separately by German broadcaster ARD.

In their 4,000-word article, the New York Times details how 23 Chinese swimmers all tested positive for the same heart medication Trimetazidine (TMZ) at a domestic swimming meeting that ended on January 3rd, 2021, just six months before the Tokyo Games which had been delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of those 23 Chinese swimmers, three went on to win gold medals in Tokyo, and are expected to challenge for medals in Paris

An investigation by China’s own Anti-Doping Agency found the cause was TMZ contamination of a hotel kitchen, traced to spice containers and draining units, where the swimmers had been staying. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) were informed of this (as were World Aquatics), and neither opted to pursue the cases any further. Despite the fact TMZ is only available on prescription, renowned for its performance-enhancing qualities, and banned in and out of competition.

Of those 23 Chinese swimmers, three went on to win gold medals in Tokyo, and are expected to challenge for medals in Paris. In the meantime, no sanctions, no bans, and most worrying of all, until now no disclosure of the positive tests – over three years later, and less than three months before the start of the Paris Olympic Games.

The finger-pointing wasn’t long in starting, the US and UK anti-doping agencies leading the way, even after Wada agreed on Thursday to appoint independent prosecutor Eric Cottier to conduct a full review of their handling of the case (and after stating: “We would do exactly the same thing.”)

Travis Tygart, head of the US Anti-Doping, called it “a tragedy for clean athletes around the world”, and accused the Wada leadership of “trying to pull the wool over our eyes”.

Hajo Seppelt, part of ARD team that also helped reveal the state-sponsored doping in Russia, was also telling in his view: “We don’t know if we heard the truth from the Chinese intelligence service or if the story was simply made up. The latter seems more probable if you see all the mysterious circumstances in that case.”

There is a long history of this sort of carry-on in doping, not just in China or Russia, when someone involved is clearly not telling the truth, or else making something up, and therein lies so much of the problem.

The contamination excuse is neatly fitting with the vast majority of positive tests in cycling in recent years – including the “vanishing twin” (Tyler Hamilton), the “pigeon pie” (Adri van der Poel), the “poppy seed muffin” (Alexi Grewal), and not forgetting the “EPO-stained handlebar tape” (okay, I made up that one).

In terms of good old excuses, sex typically works as well as any lies. Setting the trend here was US sprinter Dennis Mitchell, who way back in 1998 tested positive for testosterone, his defence being he drank five bottles of beer and had sex with his wife at least four times. That excuse was accepted by US Track and Field, though the IAAF (now World Athletics) banned him for two years.

There was also precedent-setting kissing case in 2009, when French tennis player Richard Gasquet was also cleared of a positive test for cocaine after convincing an ITF anti-doping tribunal he’d ingested it while kissing a woman in a Miami nightclub the night before.

And then there is the whiskey in the jar tale, involving our own Michelle Smith de Bruin, who won three gold medals and one bronze in the swimming pool at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Back then, remember, Ireland still didn’t have even one Olympic-sized swimming pool, and although there were some hints (and plenty of rumours) that de Bruin might just do something special, no one had expected her to win more individual gold medals at those Atlanta Olympics than any other athlete, from any other nation, in any other sport.

But whatever ripples of suspicion de Bruin left behind in the pool in Atlanta became an international splash less than two years later, after drug testers Al and Kay Guy showed up at her home in Kilkenny, on January 10th, 1998.

A few months later de Bruin’s sample jar was revealed to contain a level of alcohol that would have been fatal if consumed by a human.

A hearing before the Fina doping panel was held in July 1998, where the accusation of tampering with a sample was made. The following month the panel found that under Fina rules, de Bruin had committed a doping offence.

Suspended from all participation in any Fina-governed swimming events for a period of four years, it effectively ended her swimming career.