OLYMPIC CHAMPS FASTER, STRONGER . . OR JUST HIGHER?

SYDNEY -- It's Getting So Only The Losers Are Credible

That makes the also rans those who finish way up the track and way down
the standings the only athletes worthy of our unadulterated trust.
Which includes a whole lotta Canadians. And who'd have thought that
choking would turn out to be a redeeming quality?

These Olympics, winding down towards the last weekend of competition,
have been singularly splendid from an organizational point of view. The
venues are top drawer. The volunteers are friendly to a fault. The
entire atmosphere in Sydney has been joyful. And, yes, the competition
has been breathtaking.

But who do you believe anymore? Which athlete who mounts the podium can
be looked at through unsquinty eyes and admired for the purity of their
heart, the honesty of their excellence?

Not A One

Not even the heroic Cathy Freeman or the magnificent Marion Jones or
the wildly charming Massimiliano Rosolino. Gold medalists all, Olympic
champions all, but tarnished ever so faintly by all the cheating and
conniving and just plain stupidity of these Games.

It's the innocent who will carry the burden of duplicity. Because we'll
never know, not for certain.

Who's clean? Who's dirty? As the testing mechanisms for performance
enhancing drugs become more sophisticated, so too do the masking agents
and subterfuges that some athletes embrace in their maddened lust for
glory. Maybe that's the only way to compete these days. Maybe it should
be no syringes barred and let the competitors do what they will to
transform their bodies into high performance machines. It's their
funeral and their pockmarked faces, their shrunken genitals, their
brain tumours, their sterility, their moustaches on women and breasts
on men.

Florence Griffiths Joyner, resplendent in gold at the '88 Olympics,
dies suddenly at age 44 with steroid use believed to be a contributing
factor and still these keenly health conscious athletes treat their
bodies like toxic waste dumps.

Such a gamble to take, when most of these medallists won't even be
remembered a month from now. It's a fleeting fame for the majority of
Olympic champions and the roar of the crowd rapidly subsides. Then
comes the ever after part and deals made with the devil will exact
their due.

Some Australian papers and maybe even those back home, dunno have taken
to publishing a daily booted athlete table, along with a by country
medal tally. These are the parallel anti Olympics, a running tally of
the devious who've been outed by their own urine and blood, not to
mention the Uzbekistan coach who was fined $10,000 for attempting to
bring 15 vials of human growth hormone through Sydney Airport.

As of last night, the anti doping patrol had conducted 323 out of
competition urine tests, 760 in competition tests, and 227 EPO blood
tests since Sept. 2. The Hall of Shame list includes: a Latvian rower,
Iranian boxer, three Bulgarian weightlifters (including a female gold
medalist), two Romanian weightlifters, a lifter from Norway, one from
Taiwan. Canadian equestrian Eric Lamaze got done for cocaine pre
Olympics and was kept off the squad even when an arbitrator ruled in
his favour on the grounds of "exceptional circumstances." And let's not
forget the 27 Chinese athletes who took themselves out of the Games
before the Games began, as did American world shot put champion (and
husband of 100 metre champion Marion Jones) C. J. Hunter.

Meanwhile, scandalized Linford Christie, good for gold at Barcelona in
the 100 metres, tries to sneak around the athletes' village and
training venues in order to handle the runners he coaches. Such
surreptitious behaviour is required because Christie like other drug
positive athletes on the banned list is persona non grata at the
Olympics.

None of these individuals are worthy of our sympathy, probably. But
surely one might spare a kind thought for Romanian gymnast Andreea
Raducan, who was stripped yesterday of her gold medal in the individual
all round event after being found guilty of taking a banned substance,
pseudoephedrine.

The 17 Year Old Had A Cold

She went to her team doctor for relief. He gave her a prescription,
just as he'd done for five or six other members of the Romanian team
who'd also come down with the sniffles. This is a physician
specializing in the care of athletes and, presumably, well aware of
which drugs are proscribed. None of Raducan's teammates tested
positive. With Raducan, it's believed the drug registered more strongly
in her urine because of her smaller size. This drug, by the way, is not
on the International Gymnastic Federation's list of banned drugs but
does appear on the IOC's no no list. So much for consistency.

The IOC, rightly or wrongly wrongly, in my opinion has taken a zero
tolerance position on all its banned drugs. (In practice, this is
something less than zero, since much depends on the quality of legal
representation an athlete can afford. A group of lawyers in Sydney have
offered their professional services free of charge to all athletes, for
any purpose, but the likes of the aforementioned C. J. Hunter, who's
not even an actual Olympian for these Games, can apparently afford to
hire himself "family friend" Johnnie Cochran.) That means the
punishment is no different for a banned cold tablet, an anabolic
steroid or a growth hormone.

It might do well to remember the athlete's oath that was taken by
Australian runner and former gold medal Hockeyroo Nova Peris Kneebone
on the night of the opening ceremonies:

"In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in
these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern
them, committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs
in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the
honour of our teams."

We'll never know how many athletes had their fingers crossed behind
their backs at the time.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.