DOPING NUMBS THE SENSE OF WONDER

Spectators Cannot Admire Champions Who Win by Fraudulent Means

PARIS---Perhaps Michelle SmithDe Bruin is guilty of tampering with her own
urine samples. Perhaps not. Whatever the result of her appeal in the courts,
whatever the merits of her four-year ban from swimming, international sport
is unquestionably guilty.

The use of banned performance-enhancing drugs by elite athletes is clearly
widespread, maybe even close to universal in some sports. For too many years
and too many Olympiads, the rewards have been too great and the risk of
getting caught too slight to dissuade would-be medalists.

We are at another crossroads this month. Doping scandals turned this
summer's Tour de France into a very different sort of pursuit and now De
Bruin has been suspended from her sport by FINA, swimming's governing body.

A triple gold medalist at the 1996 Summer Olympics, De Bruin is arguably the
most prominent sports figure to be banned since the Canadian sprinter Ben
Johnson tested positive for steroids at the 1988 Games. There have been
others, including Lyubov Yegorova, the Russian cross-country skier, who has
won a record six Winter Olympic golds and was banned for three years after
she tested positive for Bromantan at last yearis world Nordic championships.

Fraud---and that is what drug cheats are engaging in---should not go
unpunished, and public humiliation and loss of earning power would normally
appear to be effective deterrents. The problem is that the current system
punishes so few of the guilty and makes those whom it does punish look like
lonely villains instead of flawed protagonists with plenty of company on the
moral low ground.

Johnson's ban set off a flurry of bureaucratic activity and official
handwringing, but a decade later it is clear that Johnson's fall from grace
was no turning point, merely part of a continuum and, in some insidious way,
an inspiration.

How else to explain that in 1995, when 198 elite---mostly
American---athletes were polled on whether they would take a banned
performance-enhancing subtance if they could be guaranteed that they would
win and not be caught, 195 said they would do it. The athletes, who kept
their anonymity, were also asked what they would do if a banned substance
guaranteed.they would win every competition they entered for the next five
years and then later cause them to die from the side effects. About half
said that they would take the substance.

That is the climate we are dealing with here. These young and gifted people
have a case of tunnel vision and an oddly persuasive and self-soothing moral
escape hatch: If so many others are taking these drugs, why shouldn't I? If
those who oversee and organize sports cannot make the playing field level,
why shouldn't I take matters into my own hands?

The International Olympic Committee is again bustling about. A special
meeting of the Executive Board has been called for later this month, and the
International Olympic Committee president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, is
tentatively planning a conference on drugs for January in Switzerland.
(Conferences are a Samaranch specialty). But the truth is that sports
organizations have demonstrated neither the clout nor the will to stamp out
the problem. There is an inherent conflict of interest in an international
federation's testing its own stars: Too many positive tests are not good for
business in this sponsordriven age.

Perhaps the only way to make serious inroads is for police and other
conventional law-enforcement agencies to become more involved, as they did
in France during the Tour.

Prince Alexandre de Merode, head of the International Olympic Committee's
medical commission, reportedly said this week, "We will never rid sports of
drugs, because cheating is part of human nature. But we can reduce it."

De Merode is correct that there will always be cheaters. It is that
realization that inspires some to lobby for the use of performance-enhancing
drugs to be legalized: If there is no way to stop some athletes from getting
an illicit advantage, then make that advantage licit and end the inherent
hypocrisy of it all. That is a seductively simple solution to a complex
problem and, for me, terribly wrong-headed.

Drugs like anabolic steroids and amphetamines, and this decade's
performance-enhancers of choice, EPO and human growth horrnone, carry
potentially significant health risks. By endorsing their use at the highest
level, you exclude those competitors who wish to avoid those risks. You also
endanger the health of those on the lower levels of the pyramid.

A survey by Pennsylvania State University in 1997 suggested that 2.4 percent
of girls and 5 percent of boys enrolled in American high schools had used
steroids.

The message that drug use is worth the risk clearly has trickled down, and
condoning it at the World Cup and Grand Prix levels will only increase it in
schools and clubs. But the issue is not only medical. It is also philosophical.

Why, after all, do sports inspire? It is not simply because athletes are
powerful or graceful, or faster and more skilled than anyone before them.

It is because their performances create a connection with the spectator.
There is nationalism (the French cheer for the French) and there is
admiration, but how much admiration can one feel if the means to the
impressive end are artificial?

It is like admiring a man with a fine toupee for his thick head of hair, or
a woman who has had a facelift for her smooth skin. It is hollow, false, and
one of the biggest problems with sports today is that whenever someone does
something remarkable---sets a world record, runs through the pain, steps
suddenly from the shadows into the light---it creates as much suspicion as
it does sense of wonder.

Banned Swimmer Vows to File Suit

The Associated Press

DUBLIN---Michelle Smith-De Bruin, the Olympic swimming champion, vowed
Friday to fight her four-year drug-related suspension and said she would sue
FINA, swimming's international governing body, for damages.

Smith-De Bruin, a triple goldmedal winner for Ireland in 1996, was suspended
Thursday after the federation determined that she had tampered with her
urine sample.

"It was a blatant attempt to ruin my swirnming career," she said of the ban.
"I will be seeking substantial damages." Smith-De Bruin said she had never
taken any banned substance and would take her case to the Court of
Arbitration for Sport.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett