Staggering ignorance, or unbelievable innocence, Peter Dawson, club secretary of the Royal and Ancient, should know better. This week golf made a bid for a place in the Olympics but announced there would be no drug testing of players this year. Quite a hurdle, actually, if you wish to join the "Olympic Club".
Cast your mind back to before the Tour de France came to Ireland and you will have heard cycling officials claim there was no significant drugs problem in the sport. That was before Willy Voet was caught with a boot-load of gear crossing the Belgian border en route to the peloton.
In that light the evidence to support Dawson's belief in the cleanliness of golf appears a little flimsy.
" . . . we do not think there is a drug problem in golf and there will be no testing this year . . . ," he announced. For some strange reason people like IOC presidential hopeful Dr Jacque Rogge, who is Dublin this weekend for an Olympic seminar, may not accept Dawson's assurances at face value.
Waiting for CJD
ON a similar point, competitors at last year's Olympic Games who believe they got away without leaving their dabs at the scene of the crime may face a more sinister kind of justice for cheating. Those who used the undetectable body-building human growth hormone will have to wait 10 years before they will know whether they have contracted the human form of mad cow disease. A decade is the approximate time span before the effects of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) are evident.
Scientists have confirmed the human growth hormone contaminated with the virus has been identified in laboratory tests in Europe.
Stamp of greatness
Eddie Jordan might wonder why the new set of motor-racing stamps issued by An Post affords his Jordan F1 racing car the 30 pence stamp while the £1 stamp features a Mercedes Benz. Maybe An Post took their lead from the constructors' championship which has McLarenMercedes a few rungs above the Jordan. But look on the good side, more people probably buy the 30 pence stamp.
Corpse carries a price
A group of Nigerian footballers are to raise money to pay off the witch doctor who is still holding the corpse of former Nigerian skipper Sam "Zagallo" Opone who died last November.
"We are raising money to pay the witch doctor," said Augustine Popo, one of the footballers. "The man has been very cooperative and has even shown us the mortuary where Opone's corpse is being kept."
The witch doctor is demanding about $1,200 owed to him for the late player's treatment, which clearly didn't work. According to a local newspaper, Opone was receiving treatment before his death from the witch doctor, Blacky Awommi, in southern Nigeria after he suffered a stroke.
The newspaper reported that when the former defender died, witch doctor Blacky refused to give up the corpse to the family until he was paid.
Morton pitch battle
The ongoing row at Morton Stadium over throwing events (hammer, discus, shot) being excluded from meetings could be sorted out by asking the groundsmen's opinion. Sources who know a little about wheelbarrows of sand say it takes more of them to repair the pitch after a soccer match than it does to repair the grass after a full-blown athletics meeting. Could this be true?
