PHELPS COULD LEARN FROM RONO'S STORY OF RECOVERY

In Ways, It'S the Harshest Lesson of All for Any Athlete Outside the
Sporting Arena; the Difference Between Having Fun and Being Smart,
Writes Ian O'Riordan

EVEN BY their own, often debasing, standards, it was difficult to
fault the headline the News of the World ran last Sunday next to the
picture of Michael Phelps puffing heavily on a bong of marijuana:
"What A Dope."

Whether he was inhaling - and Phelps has been cute enough to neither
confirm nor deny that - it is proving a harsh lesson for the young man
who made Olympic history in Beijing last August.

In ways, it's the harshest lesson of all for any athlete outside the
sporting arena; the difference between having fun and being smart.

At 23, Phelps may not yet realise it, but one of the things that comes
with winning eight gold medals and setting seven world records at the
same Olympics is responsibility. It simply comes with the territory,
especially these days, with mobile phone cameras so widespread.

He may have been a million miles away from Beijing's Water Cube when
he picked up that bong at a student party at the University of South
Carolina last November, but he was still Michael Phelps - the 14-time
Olympic gold medallist, the most decorated male Olympian of all time,
and, yes, a role model for young athletes across every sport.

There was nothing illegal about what he was doing, at least not in the
sporting sense. (It is of course still mostly unlawful; a whole other
issue.) Cannabis is not prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency,
except during competition. However, the USA Swimming association have
issued him with a three-month ban. They reckoned Phelps had sent out
the wrong message, and wanted to send the right one back.

The suspension will end in plenty of time for Phelps to swim at the
World Championships in Rome next July, yet clearly he's been shaken by
the affair. On Thursday, he told his hometown newspaper, the Baltimore
Sun, that he's not even sure he'll keep swimming until the London
Olympics in 2012, as it was "going to require a lot of time and energy
and a lot of thinking for myself".

When the paper asked Phelps if he was a regular pot smoker, he again
dodged the big answer: "This was stupid, and I know this won't happen
again. It's obviously bad judgment, and it's something I'm not proud
of at all. I will say that with the mistakes that I've made in my
life, I've learned from them."

Indeed, maybe he has. Shortly after winning six gold medals at the
Athens Olympics he was done for drink driving, and there haven't been
any repeat offences. But this is the man who the US Anti-Doping Agency
used as one of their poster boys in the run-up to Beijing.

Now, inevitably, there are questions about whether Phelps should
continue in that role - and inevitably some other questions are being
raised too. Olympic sport has enough problems with people doing dumb
things for dumb reasons.

Most of his many (big) sponsors are standing by him, including Speedo,
Omega and Visa, although another, the Kellogg cereal firm, are
reconsidering.

The picture of Phelps with a bong in his hand may not cost him a whole
lot of money, but it probably has cost him some of his credibility,
because even if you do have 14 Olympic gold medals, and a reputation
for being unbeatable, you have to be careful not to throw it all away.

It's happened before to some of the best athletes in the world, a
career left in ruins not because of something that's banned in sport
or even necessarily harmful, but something that can prove just as
destructive as, say, being busted for anabolic steroids. Because
success is as much about how you carry yourself off the field as on
it.

Henry Rono was preaching this in the most recent issue of the IAAF
magazine. Rono never failed a drug test, and God knows how fast he
would have run had he ever taken anything, but in a candid interview,
following his IAAF 2008 Inspirational Award, one of the first great
Kenyan runners talks about how his career fell apart shortly after he
set his fourth world record, over 5,000 metres, in 1981.

"I've been to the top of the highest mountain and then down to the
bottom of the world," says Rono. "Looking back now, I can remember
what happened in 1978 (when he set four world records in 81 days, over
3,000 metres, 5,000 metres, 10,000 metres and the 3,000 metres
steeplechase), but then the next eight years are more or less a blank."

What happened in 1978 was that Rono started drinking.

Nothing excessive at first, but rather a simple indulgence into the
post-race or off-season practice that was then fairly common in
distance running culture.

In 1980, when Kenya boycotted the Olympics, Rono began cursing his
fate and his luck, and the drinking become a real problem.

The following year his weight was fluctuating severely, and Rono was
fast succumbing to alcoholism. He somehow managed to put a track
season together, despite drinking daily, and late in the summer was
invited to small meeting in Knarvik, near Oslo, for a crack at his
5,000 metres world record of 13:08.04. As soon as Rono arrived in
Norway he promptly started drinking, and by all accounts got hammered
drunk in the meeting hotel the night before the race.

He woke the next morning with a massive hangover, naturally enough.
Filled with remorse, Rono went running, practically flat out, for over
an hour in an effort to sweat the alcohol out of his system.

At 4pm, and paced by the British pair of Ian Stewart and a young Steve
Cram, Rono produced one of the greatest world records in distance
running history - given the circumstances - when he improved his
record to 13:06.20, closing with a 56-flat last lap. It was to be his
last world record and one of his last notable achievements on the track.

A year later, Britain's Dave Moorcroft broke his world record, with
Rono finishing a distant fourth, and as his drinking got steadily
worse so did his ability to manage it. By 1984, he was a shadow of his
former self, failed to make the Kenyan team for the Los Angeles
Olympics, and spiralled increasingly downwards.

By 1990, he was penniless and staying at a homeless shelter in
Washington DC.

Then the comeback began, not in a running sense, but a life sense.
Rono got himself into a re-education programme, and now, aged 56, is
teaching high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he also coaches
several young distance runners.

"I'm a recovering alcoholic, but I've been sober for the last seven
years. I believe I've recovered my dignity and my place in society.
What I am doing in my life right now is like a gold medal to me. The
issue of not going to the 1980 Olympics is now behind me and so too
are the problems I had for 21 years from 1978."

What Rono's story illustrates is that there are many different ways to
undo great athletic talent and achievement, that even in the prime of
your career you have to be careful what you play with.

Phelps may have only scratched the surface of his sporting reputation,
but it's scratched nonetheless, and that's the difference between
having fun and being smart.