FINA’s Got Some Explaining To Do

You’ve got to hand it to L’Equipe, if there’s a story about a high-profile athlete who is or will be accused of doping, they are often the ones to break the story. Being the scandal sheet of the French sports press, one would expect them to be off the front with those kinds of articles.

But they can’t do it without sources who have access to the information, unless they’re completely making things up. Unfortunately, more often than not there is at least some substance to what L’Equipe reports.

They are so well connected in some places (like France’s anti-doping lab, LNDD) that Pat McQuaid felt he had to leak the story about Floyd Landis’ positive result last July, because … well if he didn’t do it, someone at the lab would. That was a lesson McQuaid seems to have learned from the Armstrong dust-up in 2005, when someone at the lab passed information to a L’Equipe reporter about some research that suggested Armstrong may have used EPO in the 1999 Tour de France, when he won the race for the first of seven consecutive times.

The current story about Ian Thorpe was broken by none other than L’Equipe. The culprit who gave them the information most likely works at one of the following places:

• The Australian anti-doping lab
• The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency (ASADA)
• FINA, the international swimming federation, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, or
• The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), also based in Lausanne

The head of ASADA, Richard Ings, has stated that he believes the source for the story isn’t in Australia. And it does seem awfully unlikely (though not impossible) that a French reporter based in Paris would have a source inside either the lab or the agency. But not impossible.

Since they are much closer to home, my hunch is that someone at FINA or the CAS passed information to L’Equipe. It’s much easier for a reporter to cultivate sources in Lausanne, where French is spoken, than in Australia. If not for the language, then consider the time difference. Calling across so many timezones takes some planning at both ends. Of course, email can solve that problem quite handily.

FINA, it seems, is hiring a private investigator to find out who leaked the information. Interesting. Is this to find and punish the person, or to divert attention from the possibility that it was one of their own who did the deed? If they find the person, will they release that information to the press and the public? Will the person be prosecuted?

Ian Thorpe certainly deserves to know who the person is that’s been defaming him, and the public deserves to know whether this is a highly placed official at FINA, or someone lower down in the organization who’s breaking confidentiality rules. But if it does turn out to be someone from FINA, will we ever hear about it, or will the story quietly die away?

If it turns out the leak came from the CAS, what then? That certainly paints the whole system in a different light, doesn’t it? Fairness and impartiality may well be out the window — or at least, our perception that the CAS system is fair would be out the window. Certainly, there are parts of the anti-doping process that are neither fair nor particularly interested in true justice, as we’ve seen in the Landis case.

The reporters at L’Equipe are doing their jobs very well in digging up this dirt and disseminating it throughout the world. Think what you will of them, what about the people dishing the dirt? These are insiders with an axe of some sort to grind. Do they have personal vendettas against certain athletes? Do they have a warped sense of justice? Do they have some narcissistic need to see stories they’ve leaked — true or not — in the press? Do they have some sort of sick, twisted need to see star athletes thrown to the wolves because of doping allegations? Are they frustrated, bitter people who are jealous of the success of others?

Whatever the case, these people seem intent on causing real harm. And while these people may be getting their jollies watching the damage caused by the stories they leak, it’s not just the accused athletes who are being damaged, it is the anti-doping system and all of sports. Every time the media tar and feather someone with the epithet “Doper” — whether rightly or wrongly — it’s not just the person accused who is the victim, it’s everyone who participates in sports. These days there are some, exemplified by Dick Pound, who believe all athletes are dopers and it’s only a matter of time before they get caught.

That is hardly fair to the vast majority who compete cleanly. And it leads to the development of systems (like WADA’s anti-doping process) which assume guilt and deny athletes due process and fair adjudication, as we have learned in the Landis case, among others.

So the next time you see a story break — and it will very likely be in L’Equipe — ask yourself, “What does the person selling the story to the media get out of all of this?” Is it the “pleasure” of watching someone suffer (and it’s a sick individual who takes pleasure in that), or does this person have some sort of misguided view that he or she is helping rid the world of cheaters?

There’s a very good chance that Ian Thorpe raced cleanly, and that his name should not be smeared with the muck L’Equipe so dearly loves to rake. And the same is true for Floyd Landis, though L’Equipe can’t be blamed for breaking Landis’ story, that honor goes to Pat McQuaid. Neither of these athletes deserved the kind of attention the leaks to the press thrust upon them.

In Landis’ case, he should have been allowed due process before the information was made public. By maintaining confidentiality, everyone would have been able to move forward with the rest of the world none the wiser until the process was complete. At the very least, Landis and his team would have had the time to actually review the allegations and prepare a response, rather than have to improvise. Assuming the process found him innocent (or at least “not guilty”) of the charges, no damage would have been done to his reputation or his ability to earn a living.

In Thorpe’s case, there’s not even an adverse finding. How unfair is it that he should be tarred and feathered by the press before he’s even been accused of anything by the anti-doping agencies? It will be very interesting to see if FINA’s investigator is able to determine who, if anyone, is the source who leaked Thorpe’s name to the press. But FINA has something else to answer for, and it’s this: Why are they appealing to the CAS when ASADA is still investigating the case?

It’s not just the leak of Thorpe’s name that smells fishy. Since their actions have brought about the story, FINA needs to explain why they took the extraordinary step to go to the CAS before ASADA’s investigation was complete.