Labor Day Musings

The View From Morphine Heights: A West Side Story

I’ve been away this weekend, visiting the sleepy Midwestern college town I where I attended high school for my umpteen millionth class reunion. Activities every day, including an informal gathering at a local watering hole Friday night, a formal dinner Saturday night (or casual depending on one’s interpretation) and a picnic yesterday afternoon. It’s a strange thing, going back there once every five years. The town’s changes highlight just how different it is now, than it was back when I was growing up.

Perhaps the biggest, most obvious changes are new buildings that appear and the old ones that vanish, as well as the businesses that come and go. But there are other changes, too. The town’s public swimming pool — which I remember from when it opened way back when, during the summer between kindergarten and first grade — has fallen into disuse and is now a half-filled tub of green, brackish water.

I spent countless hours in that pool (back when it was a working pool) during the summers, early in the morning, swimming laps during the swim club’s workouts. I can still remember the feel of the water. Sixty-five degrees of bone-chilling cold. Until the sprints started, and by then I’d be so warmed up (or cooled down) that I wouldn’t even notice the temperature.

The pool is clearly visible from the top of a hill that my generation knows as Morphine Heights. I doubt any morphine was ever consumed up there, but I know various individuals who smoked one variety of tobacco or another up there — and other types of chemicals may have been consumed up there as well. In junior high school, the cool kids cut class to go smoke cigarettes up on Morphine Heights. If you look carefully, you can probably find more than a few of those old cigarette butts left behind.

Each morning of our visit, my wife and I went out for a run. We went trail running a bit on Saturday, running through Happy Hollow, the town’s only park. As we left the park, we ran up the hill that leads to Morphine Heights. It’s a steep hill, too steep to actually run up. We hiked it more than ran. And by the top, my pulse was pounding loud and fast. As we came out of the woods, there was the view. Same as it ever was. The east side of the river and the county courthouse off in the distance. In the foreground, the pool.

In years gone by, that pool would have been filled with laughing, running, jumping, playing kids. Teenage girls working on their tans. Teenage boys showing off for the girls by doing cannonballs off the high board. And some older adults, swimming in the one lane set aside for them, running the full width of the pool. The place would always be crowded. Especially on the last weekend of the season, which would be Labor Day weekend. But there it stood: Empty, quiet, forlorn. Times change.

We ran down the hill, then ran a mile or so down past my family’s former home on West Lutz Street. Our old neighborhood, which existed on the borderline between the student rental properties and family homes, is now firmly in the student rental camp — with one, lone exception. That house belongs to a family that was there back in my youth. The mother still lives there and still keeps her house up to the same impeccable standards of years gone by, which makes it the one well-cared-for house in a sea of ever more dilapidated structures.

Even though there were several elementary schools in town, from junior high school onwards we all went to the same school. Our class is a kind of family — a family of 200. Fortunately, most of us get along with each other. Actually, it seems the older we get, the better we get along.

Remembering That Behind Every Story Are Real People

Families are important, no matter how the families come to be. All too often, we forget that the people whose names hit the news are real people, with real families, suffering real, day-to-day challenges.

Which brings me to an article I saw over the weekend that appeared in the Harrisonburg (VA) Daily News Record. The story talks about Floyd Landis and the Shenandoah Mountain 100. At the end, it says:

Landis knows he’ll continue to be viewed in the U.S. as the face of doping scandal, even though he continues to vehemently deny ever taking a banned substance. Friday, he expressed disgust with the lab that handled his tests, the world anti-doping community and, mostly, the slow movement of his arbitration hearing.

“At this point, if they’re still trying to figure out the science, I don’t know,” Landis said. “But it’s disrupting everything about my life. It’s unbearable. There’s no reason it should take this long.”

One of the worst aspects of what Landis has been forced to endure the last year is the uncertainty of what’s going to happen, when. It’s bound to have an effect on him and on his family. While we’re waiting on the ruling, for the rest of us, our lives will go on regardless of how the arbitrators decide. For Floyd Landis and his family, the arbitrators’ decision will have a huge impact on their future. Perhaps the arbitrators have been taking their time to carefully consider his case. Or perhaps they are trying to balance a number of responsibilities.

Whatever the case, however, the fact is that it’s taken too long to come to an end. I can understand the frustration he must feel. I hope that by the time this case ends, real justice will be done. At the same time, I hope that by the time this case ends, enough people will care deeply enough about how flawed the anti-doping system is that they will actively work towards changing it for the better.

Floyd Landis can’t get the last year of his life back (and many of the losses of the last year can never truly be rectified), but perhaps one good thing can come from his trials and tribulations. And, to me, that would be the remolding of the anti-doping system into something that is a better approximation of justice than currently exists.

Thorpe’s Case Closed

Thanks to reader “just bitch slap me please” for pointing out that the Ian Thorpe case, as far as the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) goes, has come to a close. In March, Damien Ressiot of L’Equipe published a story that suggested Thorpe had tested positive when he submitted to an out-of-competition anti-doping test the previous year.

Apparently, Thorpe’s test results indicated unusual levels of testosterone and luteinizing hormone. According to the BBC article linked above, ASADA’s statement said:

Experts from [a number of] internationally respected organisations were unanimous in their opinion that the evidence available does not indicate the use of performance enhancing substances by the athlete.

With the exception of the leak or leaks of information that caused Thorpe’s story to be splashed across the pages of L’Equipe and other publications, his case has been handled many times better than the Landis affair.

Before pressing any charges against Thorpe, ASADA took the time to research what might have caused the results. In doing so, they sought the advice of a number of experts prior to making a decision on how to proceed. While time-consuming, ASADA’s approach appears to be much more of a “search for truth” than at other agencies.

The rest of the anti-doping community could learn a thing or two from ASADA about critical thinking and how to apply it to the anti-doping process. If such an approach had been followed in Floyd Landis’ case, it can easily be argued that no report of a positive test would have ever occurred.

Critical thinking appears to be sorely lacking in some quarters when it comes to anti-doping tests, their results and their interpretation. When the members of WADA meet in November to discuss changes to the World Anti-Doping Code, ASADA should put on a presentation about how they manage anti-doping data and cases. Once their approach is understood, WADA and the other anti-doping agencies should follow ASADA’s lead and require more real investigation prior to charging athletes with doping offenses.

It would go a long way towards correcting the inequities in the current system.