PUTTING DRUGS IN THE PENALTY BOX

Finally there's welcome news about the dark world of performance-enhancing
drugs in sport. Both the Canadian government and the United States Olympic
Committee say that pro hockey players competing in next February's winter
Olympics in Salt Lake City will be subject to precisely the same
anti-doping rules as all other Olympic athletes.

That should end the glaring double standard on view at the last winter
Games when ordinary mortals like speed skaters and skiers submitted to drug
tests but not National Hockey League players. The unspoken reason was that
the millionaire hockey stars were doing the world a favour by deigning to
represent their countries at Nagano and that if anyone rubbed these gods
the wrong way they'd stay home.

Indeed, so meek was the sports establishment toward these untouchables that
when several members of the American team, vexed at having been eliminated
early in the tournament, vandalized three rooms at the Olympic Village, the
USOC was helpless to discipline anyone. It couldn't even find out who was
responsible.

More good news: the scrappier new USOC has decreed that at the 2004 Summer
Games all American basketball players must also allow testing. That could
mean that in Athens some of the hypermuscular physiques of members of the
U.S. Dream Team could be a little less stupendous.

Then again, it could mean no Dream Teams at all. The National Basketball
Association and the NHL, as well as the players' unions in both leagues,
have yet to say if they'll go along with these anti-doping initiatives.
They ought to. The Olympic spirit is not supposed to be about winning at
all costs, especially when those costs involve chemicals that mess up one's
long-term health and that impose an unfair handicap on abstinent rivals.
Ideally, the Olympic spirit is about well-being and fair play.

To be sure, the drug-testing procedures are demanding.

By the end of March, Canada and the United States would name many, if not
all members of their hockey teams, and those athletes would be subject to
random tests from then until the Games themselves. That means these players
would have to be clean for Stanley Cup rounds this spring.

Now that they have announced these principled positions, Canada's amateur
sports czar, Denis Coderre, and the USOC should resist pressure to bend. If
the hockey players see themselves as loftily above rules that apply to
other Olympians, fine, let them sit out. By sticking to their guns, Canada
and the United States will also make it harder for other countries sending
hockey teams to Nagano to remain permissive.

With its glamorization of thuggishness, the NHL has already lowered
sportsmanship standards in amateur hockey in North America. No one should
let this league, with its blind-eye policy on performance-boosting drugs,
contaminate the Olympics any further.