TODD VICTIM OF HYPOCRISY

THERE is an old African saying that if you ignore a problem for long enough
then it is bound to go away. Mark Todd appears to have applied this strategy
so far as his particular problem is concerned, with what appear to have been
miraculous results.

In spite of all the pressure, both domestic and foreign, to confess his
heresy and be burned at the stake, he still has his ticket to ride at Sydney
and there seems little doubt that that is exactly what he intends to do.
Whether or not it swallowed hard in doing so - and one supposes it did - the
New Zealand Olympic Committee has struck an adventurous blow against Olympic
humbug and given him the green light to get on with doing what he does so
well.

A couple of weeks ago that prospect appeared all but gone. It seemed that
the tabloid press had cornered yet another high profile victim through its
grubby little sting which produced several pictures of a person in a hotel
room alleged to be Todd, preparing what was alleged to be a cocaine fix in
the company of another person who was alleged to be a known cocaine user.

In most other circumstances such evidence would be promptly placed where it
belongs, in the trash can. Because it was Mark Todd, the whole business
quickly sprouted legs. It was not just the British tabloid press that began
calling for blood. If it had been we would have all been able to rally to a
nationalistic cause and tell the duff end of Fleet Street where to put their
evidence. The problem is there has been no shortage of people in this
country demanding that Todd be sacrificed on the altar of Olympic
sanctimony. Dick Quax, for one, seems to have got a real snitcher on Todd.
So have all sorts of other Olympic diehards. Their case is at best doubtful
and is further weakened by the rank hypocrisy of the whole Olympic movement
when it comes to seizure of the moral high ground.

It should be remembered that Mark Todd is not being hounded for taking
performance-enhancing drugs, a habit that is obviously still rife throughout
the Olympic community. On the contrary, it is pretty obvious that, if
anything, cocaine is a performance-diminishing drug and that anyone silly
enough to take it should be left to rue the consequences.

Mark Todd is not your average athlete, however. He is someone of
extraordinary mental discipline and the proof of that toughness is in the
results he achieves.

Because of their muddled philosophy about the need for all Olympic
competitors to be role models, those who run the Olympic system have
outlawed cocaine for presentational rather than performance-related reasons,
and that is where the problem lies. Amid all the graft, patronage, illegal
inducements and other unsavoury habits that bedevil the modern Olympics, the
alleged taking of a little cocaine in private outside the Olympic ambit by
one prospective competitor should not figure too highly on the Richter scale
of outrage.

Of course, it would be better if Mark Todd was utterly spotless, faultless
and pristine. Alas, few people can make that claim and it is time some of
the busybodies who want him to baulk at this last fence in his career
occupied their energies with the real performance-enhancing culprits.

The Mark Todd case has not bestowed much credit on any of those involved,
but if it serves to focus attention on the need for a good hard look at the
selective morality of the Olympic movement, then it will have done us all a
favour.