THE LONGEST STRETCH AWAITS ERIC LAMAZE

IT IS FOR no one but Eric Lamaze to decide whether he is a drug addict. The
Canadian equestrian, banned for the second time in four years from
representing his country in the Olympics because of cocaine use, says he is
not.

Still, it would take rather a thick wall of denial for anyone, least of all
the jumper himself, not to acknowledge that his use of illegal drugs in
recent years has caused him lots of problems and cost him a great deal.

That it cost him a trip to Sydney, in a decision announced early yesterday
by the Canadian Olympic Association, is at one and the same time both the
worst and possibly the best thing that could have happened to him.

It probably goes without saying that no one is entitled to a spot on our
Olympic team. Putting Canada on your chest and representing this country on
the greatest of international stages is a high privilege. What the angry
reaction to Lamaze suggests both from the public and his teammates is that,
even in these cynical times, it's a privilege demanding more than mere
athletic prowess.

It requires respect for commitments and rules (not to mention the law), a
capacity to win with grace and lose with dignity, an understanding that the
considerable glory of membership carries with it the significant
responsibility of role model.

By most of those measures, his medal potential notwithstanding, Eric Lamaze
failed during recent weeks to meet the mark.

It is difficult, even as his ruined dreams lie in an ash pile of his own
making, not to admire what Lamaze has made of his life after a difficult
and disadvantaged childhood in Montreal. It is difficult, moreover, not to
be troubled by the peculiar circumstances of this latest drug violation and
the on again, off again suspensions. But the fact that someone who endured
what Lamaze did four years ago in missing the Atlanta Games could get
himself into this kind of trouble again and miss Sydney, the fact that his
reaction to the pain of that was drugs, is a red flag the size of a paddock.

As it happens, I spend a good amount of time in the company of those who
have been through, or are still being mangled by, the wringer of drug and
alcohol addiction.

Perhaps it would benefit those who love Lamaze and be instructive to those
who have followed his story to hear what most conclude after they've put
some clean time behind them and are able to look back on tumultuous lives
with new found clarity.

Generally speaking, our behaviour is childish, selfish, reckless and self
destructive. Generally speaking, we are manipulators and con artists most
especially of ourselves. Generally speaking, we have large egos and little
self esteem, fluctuating between grandiosity and self pity. Generally
speaking, what we dislike most in life are consequences and pain we flee
the former through rationalizing and blaming, the latter through the relief
of chemicals.

And generally speaking, those we despise most during our using days the
rare folk who demand that, like other grown ups, we accept the consequences
of our actions are the very ones, in the long run, to whom we are most
grateful.

It may well be that those who seem the hardest on Lamaze at present are
doing him the biggest favour. It may well be that those who favour
leniency, who urge yet another chance, who seem to wish that he be treated
like an adolescent, not a man, risk killing him with kindness. His banning
from Sydney is a hard and painful consequence. But consequence and pain
serve great purpose in life. They are its best teachers.

And apparently there are lessons chief among them that drugs have never
solved problems but in the long run only made them worse that Eric Lamaze
had yet to learn.

Jim Coyle's column usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.