Reader Steve Balow reports that while being interviewed during the Sun/Nets game, Senator John McCain said that the way to address the biggest problem in sports today (steroids according to McCain) would be to “increase funding for WADA and USADA.”
Often, politicians seek to solve problems by throwing more money at them. Greater funding of WADA and USADA is not going to solve the problem of athletes choosing to chemically enhance their performance. Sure, it may help the agencies increase their detection efforts, but it’s not a solution to the problem.
Like the drug war, where our country has spent untold billions of dollars to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country, greater enforcement is no guarantee that use of the illegal drugs (in this case steroids and other performance enhancing drugs) will stop. In fact, by all appearances, the drug war that the United States has been waging for 30-odd years has had little or no impact on drug use. More funding for WADA or USADA could have the same results — the appearance of doing something, while nothing really changes.
Other changes need to occur in order to reduce the likelihood of the drugs being used in the first place. What I’m talking about are cultural changes within sports and society as a whole that will take time. Money won’t necessarily cause these changes to happen.
Another reason McCain’s solution won’t be effective is that the existing anti-doping system has structural problems which need to be addressed. Money may help fix some of those problems, but many of the problems are procedural and can be fixed without great expenses.
For instance, one thing the Landis case has done is shine a light on the anti-doping labs, themselves. Looking over Arnie Baker’s Slide Show 2.1, one thing that jumps out at me is that there are different standards at different labs for determining whether a CIR/IRMS testosterone test is considered positive or negative.
This is not fair play. What’s positive in one country could be negative in another. The standard needs to be consistent and consistently enforced. And it doesn’t cost much money for the central authority, WADA, to prescribe specific tests, performed in a specifc manner, with specific criteria for a positive findings on the drug tests performed at all WADA-accredited labs.
Another problem with the anti-doping system is the way athletes who test positive are treated. Even if there are uniform standards across the various sports on how to deal with positive doping tests, the difference between how Justin Gatlin’s case was handled and how Floyd Landis’ case was handled show that those standards are not being consistently followed from one sport to another.
Gatlin’s results did not become public before his B sample was tested and he was informed of the results. Landis’ results were leaked to the media before he even received official notification and documentation of the results of his A sample test.
And, as we’ve all seen, the way Landis has been treated since then by the people who are supposed to be ensuring fair play in sports has not been exactly fair or sporting by any stretch of the imagination.
So before we give more money to groups whose systems are out of whack, we need to demand that the systems be fixed. The question is: How?
Well, first by educating the people who fund the anti-doping agencies. Like the federal government, who supply about 70 percent of USADA’s budget. In other words, your Representatives and Senators. Don’t know who your Representative is? Search here. Don’t know who your Senators are? Search here.
Write them. Tell them you’re concerned about how USADA functions and that you’re concerned that Floyd can’t get a fair hearing under the current system. Offer solutions, such as a system that provides due process and allows the athletes access to all of the exculpatory evidence (such as data held by the anti-doping labs) in order to make their case.
Make sure your Representatives and Senators know that you won’t stand for federal tax dollars being spent to fund a system that is not structured to allow athletes access to evidence or to challenge the evidence or methods used to “prove” their guilt. Feel free to use the Sample Letter as a model for your letters. It’s based on a letter I wrote my Representative and Senators after the “No Documents For You” exchange between Landis’ attorney and USADA’s general counsel came to light.
If enough people put enough pressure on the politicians, changes could happen. But if we don’t demand change, then nothing will happen and this process will repeat itself over and over again.
Concerned about what it’s going to cost for Floyd’s defense? (Join the club.) Recently, someone (I think it was Floyd) hinted on one of the Daily Peloton Forums that a legal defense fund might be in the works. If/when that comes into being, donate. I plan to. I don’t have the financial resources of Lance Armstrong (who is rumored to be providing some financial assistance for Floyd’s defense), but I’m happy to put some of my hard-earned bucks where my mouth is.
Bothered by the way the press has treated Floyd? Write letters to the editor. Better yet, find a way to get to know the local sports reporters and clue them in to what’s wrong with the way they’ve reported the story. Or start a blog and write about it. Rant Your Head Off started in part because I was frustrated that the letters to the editor and op-ed pieces I submitted to the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets never saw the ink of the presses.
Get involved. Reading about what’s going on is good (shameless plug: keep reading Rant Your Head Off and TBV, no matter what else you do). But participating in Floyd’s defense — whether it’s writing letters to the editor, writing a blog, helping to decipher the lab documentation, donating to a legal defense fund or writing to your elected officials to educate them on the changes that need to be made to the anti-doping system — is even better.
Make your voice heard. An innocent man’s reputation and livelihood are in jeopardy. Don’t stand idly by while he gets railroaded.
Rant:
You danced around another important topic.
Why are performance enhancing drugs (PED) illegal in the first place? Is it that they pose a health risk or an unfavorable advantage?
According to WADA, it’s both. For a PED to be banned, a committee that meets and says “yes” if two of the following three criteria have to be met.
1) It endangers the health of the athlete.
2) It enhances performance
3) It violates the spirit of fair competition.
2 and 3 were the basis for WADA trying to get altitude tents banned. Its not even a drug!
So why not call PEDs “training tools” and allow them? Back when Bannister was breaking the 4 minute mile, and during the era of Chariots of Fire, people complained that training was “un-seemingly.” The idea back them was to show up and see what you could do “naturally.” Then the idea of woman competing against other woman was considered “not right”
Eventually these cultural barriers came down and neither is consider wrong now.
If vitamin C and caffeine are consider ok (although caffeine is on WADA’s watch list) why not EPO and Testosterone?
Bring it out in the open and let qualified professionals administer it.
If we’re afraid if the effects in young adults, ban it for high school kids. We put all kind of restrictions on them now (such as the number of training days). But why restrict a professional’s ability to make a living?
ORG,
Well said. I’ve been considering a rant about that topic, but I like to keep the posts fairly concise. Watch for something on that in the near future.
– Rant
Somewhat related … Frank Shorter making the case that dope testing is getting BETTER and sports are cleaner now than they have been in a long while.
http://www.flocasts.com/flotrack/speakers.php?sid=21&f=31
No mention of Floyd either directly or by implication