Sport

To cheat or be cheated, that is the question

ATHLETICS: Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies, as someone once said, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

Sat Feb 05 2011 - 00:00

ATHLETICS:Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies, as someone once said, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

WAS THAT a sniff of spring in the air this week? I thought so, until we reached the Sally Gap around lunchtime on Thursday. In a matter of minutes, a vicious wind had us clinging desperately to our bikes, while a rush of grey clouds fired small chips of ice into our faces. And the cruellest month is yet to come.

We’d left Enniskerry in pleasant sunshine, agreed we were ready for our first spin since the recent Ice Age. Riding up Glencree valley there wasn’t a soul on the road, and our conversation soon turned to the inevitable. “Did you read that Floyd Landis interview on Sunday,” I asked, “with Paul Kimmage? See he’s come completely clean now, says he’s done with cycling for good. He says as well that, in cycling, it’s still a case of cheat, or be cheated.”

When the rain came we considered turning back, cheat or be cheated, in our own little way. But convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. Friedrich Nietzsche said that, in Human, All Too Human – and it’s hard to disagree. Whatever about the convictions of Landis or Lance Armstrong, there remains something deeply satisfying about riding a good bike over the mountains, even as the elements hurl derision at your efforts. And even if professional cycling is clearly bound more by lies than the truth, the fascination never ceases.

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So Alberto Contador is intent on appealing the one-year ban proposed last week by the Spanish cycling federation. “I will do whatever is necessary to defend my innocence to the end,” he says, referring to his positive test for clenbuterol after winning last summer’s Tour de France. Contador swears his steroid-tainted sample was the result of eating contaminated meat, and nobody expected him to say otherwise – despite the long trail of suspension behind him going back to Spain’s Operación Puerto doping sting in 2006.

It’s hard to have sympathy for Contador considering there were 20 positive doping cases in Spanish cycling in the previous 18 months alone – followed in December by another doping sting known as Operación Galgo, this one involving the arrest of 14 Spanish athletes, coaches and agents.

Among them, you may remember, was Spanish distance runner Marta Domínguez, the reigning World 3,000 metre steeplechase champion, and better known here as the athlete who beat Sonia O’Sullivan to gold over 5,000 metre at the European Championships in Munich in 2002, or else for wearing a pink headband given to her by her grandmother.

Domínguez came out fighting last week too, adamant she’s never taken anything stronger than “aspirin, iron, or vitamin C”, and is simply the victim of some police conspiracy.

It’s hard to have sympathy for her either, not when fellow Spanish steeplechaser Jose Luis Blanco, who won bronze at the European Championships in Barcelona last July, has just been handed a two-year ban by the IAAF after testing positive at the Spanish championships.

Blanco, naturally, has denied ever taking drugs. (At the same time, it’s hard not to have some sympathy for Alberto Leon, the Spanish cyclist also accused of using drugs in Operación Galgo, and who last month hanged himself in his apartment in Madrid.)

So they cheat, or be cheated – but which way would you rather have it? I still remember well that day in 2002 when Domínguez beat O’Sullivan for the European gold, and how disgusted O’Sullivan was. Earlier in the week, Paula Radcliffe had beaten her in the 10,000 metres, but O’Sullivan seemed to have a hard time accepting Domínguez winning, and taking her 5,000 metres title. It was terribly close – .09 of a second – and maybe O’Sullivan could have timed her finishing sprint a little better. But she was clearly going flat out, and still couldn’t shake off Domínguez. That must have hurt, and truth is O’Sullivan had been in that position many times before, going back to her first appearance on the big stage, at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

It’s often forgotten O’Sullivan led that 3,000 metres around the final bend, poised for gold, before Yelena Romanova and Tetyana Dorovskikh, representing the Unified Russia, darted past in quick succession. O’Sullivan was left to battle for the bronze, and narrowly lost out to Angela Chalmers of Canada. A year later, Dorovskikh tested positive for steroids. Four years ago, Romanova died suddenly of unknown causes, age 43.

What is not forgotten was the way O’Sullivan was again run out of the 3,000 metres medals, at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, this time by an unknown Chinese trio. They were, of course, the product of the most controversial coach in history, the infamous Ma Junren. A few days later O’Sullivan got some consolation by winning silver in the 1,500 metres, behind another of Ma’s Army, but to this day the times those Chinese runners set in 1993 are so far off the scale it’s assumed they had to be drug-fuelled. And of course they coincided with the arrival of a cheap, hugely effective and entirely undetectable drug known as EPO.

I’ve always believed one of the main reasons O’Sullivan over-trained herself to pure exhaustion come the 1996 Olympics was because she feared the Chinese would show up again, and she wasn’t going to be cheated out of it this time. In many ways she still was: Wang Junxia, hardly seen since Stuttgart, won the 5,000 metres; O’Sullivan dropped out with two laps to go. None of Ma’s Army ever tested positive, strictly speaking anyway, although six of his runners were among 27 athletes dropped from the Chinese team just before the 2000 Olympics after failing preliminary blood tests, aware they’d be testing for EPO in Sydney.

O’Sullivan got her reward by winning silver in Sydney, behind her old rival Gabriela Szabo. Remember how close that was? Szabo never tested positive either, although three years later, in 2003, her car was stopped by French border police, just outside Monaco, where they reportedly found doping products. It should be noted Szabo wasn’t driving the car; a family friend was, and she was training in South Africa at the time. She was later cleared of any doping offence, declaring the products were for “gynaecological problems”.

I could go on like this. Remember Regina Jacobs, who fairly bullied O’Sullivan at the 1997 World Championships in Athens? She was later done for THG, one of several Americans busted in the Balco scandal, in 2003. Or Olga Yegorova, who helped spook O’Sullivan at the 2001 World Indoor Championships in Lisbon? She was finally caught just before the Beijing Olympics, one of seven Russians suspended for manipulating drug samples.

All these athletes probably felt they needed to cheat, or else be cheated. But we all have the choice, and I’ve no doubt which way O’Sullivan would rather have it.