Oh unlucky men

Roar Pro

By Greg Russell, 17 May 2009 Greg Russell is a Roar Pro

Tagged:: drugs in sport, NRL, Rugby League, WADA, Wendell Sailor

Related coverage

Wendell Sailor wearing the St. George Illawarra jersey after announcing his signing with NRL St. George Illawarra team at WIN Stadium, Wollongong, Monday, May 12, 2008. Sailor has just completed a two-year doping ban after testing positive to cocaine in 2006. AAP Image/Dean Lewins

“Oh Lucky Man”, the penultimate episode of the current season of “Underbelly”, screened in New Zealand this week. What has this to do with sport? Believe it or not, there is a topical connection.

The topic is the positive cocaine tests that were announced last weekend for Richard Gasquet, world no. 23 tennis player, and for Tom Boonen, arguably the leading road sprinter in world cycling.

The connection is that Chris “Mr Rent-a-Kill” Flannery was portrayed in said TV program as snorting cocaine just prior to carrying out some frenzied gangland executions.

It is for such “performance enhancement” that WADA and the IOC seek to ban athletes for two years for taking cocaine in-season.

To my mind this is ridiculous beyond words, and so I would like to do my little bit to take a stance against it.

For a start it is ridiculous because in all the cases of which I am aware – e.g., Gasquet, Boonen, Wendell Sailor, Matt Stevens, Martina Hingis – the cocaine use has been purely recreational and has had nothing to do with performance enhancement in sport.

Secondly it is ridiculous because even if cocaine were being used as a stimulant to achieve better performance, it’s benefit would be no greater than that of, say, performing the haka or being the recipient of one of Alan Jones’s legendary pep talks. I don’t see WADA suggesting that players should be banned for performing the haka or listening to Alan Jones (hey, now there’s a couple of nifty ideas!).

Thirdly, even if we were to reluctantly concede that there is some illicit performance-enhancing benefit in using cocaine, it is preposterous to equate such short-lived stimulation to the sustained and much greater benefit of using anabolic steroids or growth hormones or blood boosters, all of which attract exactly the same ban.

I’m guessing that WADA would argue that someone using cocaine could in principle do so before every sporting outing, and thus could attain performance enhancement every time. Well could someone please tell WADA to have a look at Ben Cousins, and they would quickly see where regular cocaine use leads – to a ruined life, as anyone with a smidgeon of common sense knows.

All this is so obvious that there can be only one conclusion: when it comes to cocaine use, WADA seeks to impose a moral code by stealth.

Well I have something to say to WADA and the IOC. I have never taken cocaine, so presumably I am in the demographic that these august bodies feel they are protecting and pleasing with their stance on cocaine. Frankly, I am appalled.

I was appalled and embarrassed by the treatment meted out to Wendell Sailor by the Australian rugby community, most of whom behaved like sniggering schoolboys with their class-fuelled glee over a rugby league convert being banned for nothing more than many of them were doing every weekend. I always wondered how these same people would have reacted had it been a “true blue” like Stirling Mortlock or Phil Waugh who tested positive.

Probably they would have reacted in the same way as English rugby did when one of their favorite sons, Lawrence Dallaglio, became tabloid fodder for use and distribution of cocaine and ecstasy: by closing ranks and protecting him.

Poor Matt Stevens – presumably because he’s a South African, the gin-n-tonic brigade think he deserves his two-year ban.

What will the ATP and its global stars do for Gasquet? The tennis fraternity was spared this issue in the case of Hingis, because the ever-clever Swiss Miss promptly announced her retirement after her cocaine positive, meaning that her two-year ban meant nothing.

But Gasquet is at the front end of his career – will his fellow tennis professionals rally around him in support if he is handed a nonsensical two-year ban?

Oddly enough it is in cycling, a sport riven by drugs and denials and cover-ups, that one finds some common sense over cocaine.

Boonen, who has been caught for the second time, is facing a ban of only 6 months, and this is purely aimed at helping him to sort out a personal problem, as opposed to being a punishment for trying to enhance sporting performance (yeah right, a guy is going to snort cocaine because it will help him to sprint faster after 6 hours in the saddle).

At least cycling’s tawdry record with drugs equips it to know what is a drug problem and what isn’t; quite clearly and quite correctly it has decided that it has much bigger fish to fry than cocaine.

Indeed, this is exactly what Graeme Steel, Chief Executive of Sport Free NZ (formerly the New Zealand Sports Drug Agency) had the courage to say publicly in 2007: that testing for recreational, non-performance-enhancing drugs is a waste of time and money, and that these precious resources would be far better spent on looking for the much smaller number of genuinely performance-enhancing drugs, namely steroids, growth hormones and blood boosters.

Interestingly, Steel was speaking not just of marijuana and cocaine, but also of things like cold remedies (remember the huge fuss over this and Samantha Riley about a decade ago?).

Evidently Steel made no headway in his battle, because we still have the utter charade over cocaine.

If sports want to ban their athletes from using cocaine, then let’s have that as a moral debate.

But please let’s desist with the charade of labelling it drugs in sport and imposing a ludicrously penal two-year ban.

One is almost tempted to unleash Chris “Mr Rent-a-Kill” Flannery on such proponents.

Enjoy sports? Enjoy a bargain? All Sports Online has your favourite sporting brands at up to 70% off. Online only, premium quality sporting goods and merchandise at discounted prices. Get a deal now.

The Crowd Says (39) | Page 1 of Comments

Rob said | May 17th 2009 @ 7:54am | Report comment

How is a performance enhancing drug defined? Does a rub down with Dencorub improve performance? Cortisone shots? Any painkillers? Ice packed on an injury? I’m not being facetious.

Reply
Spiro Zavos said | May 17th 2009 @ 7:58am | Report comment

Greg makes an interesting argument. There is I think an ‘image of the game’ aspect, too, that needs to be considered when the issue of recreational drug use is considered.
As far as stimulants to help performance are concerned, distinction needs to be made between ‘allowable’ stimulants like pasta or the use of a coffee beans (an aid that George Gregan and the ACT Brumbies memorably used) and stimulants that had/have the likelihood of damaging the long term health of a player.

Reply
Knives Out said | May 17th 2009 @ 8:24am | Report comment

Dear Mr. Russell,

Lawrence Dallaglio never returned a positive drug sample. His crime was arrogance, pride and stupidity. Matt Steven’s crime was illegal drug use, regardless of the desired outcome of his preferred drug. Both players received both positive and negative media attention. As I recall, Dallaglio made the front page of the tabloids. Matt Stevens did not. Regardless, the UK rugby community accepted their responses and apologies and appropriately critiqued and supported them, in equal measure. That Matt Stevens was born in SA is completely irrelevant, as is your comment about an alleged gin and tonic brigade.

Yours,

ashamed Roarer.

Reply
Knives Out said | May 17th 2009 @ 8:35am | Report comment

NB. There is no connection whatsoever with the use of cocaine and performance enhancing drugs. Performance enhancing drugs will allow medium to long-term muscle and aeorbic development whereas cocaine use inspires short burst of adrenaline. Hence cocaine would be snorted prior to an act of violence. There is a reason that criminals, football hooligans, clubbers etc do not inject themselves in the bottom with steroids prior to gangland naughtiness.

Reply
Greg Russell said | May 17th 2009 @ 9:24am | Report comment

KO,

1. As I have commented before in response to your abuse, at least I put my name out there rather than hiding behind a nom de plume.

2. “you are neither a scientist”
Check your facts #1: I am an internationally recognized scientist by profession (check my website, something you will be able to do, because I give my name).

3. “There is no connection whatsoever with the use of cocaine and performance enhancing drugs”
Check your facts #2: cocaine is classified as a performance-enhancing drug by WADA.
Read the article #1: the whole point of my article is that cocaine should not be classified thus – that’s all.

4. “if Mr. Russell had bothered to consider the moral connotations that leading sportsmen accept.”
Read the article #2: I wrote “If sports want to ban their athletes from using cocaine, then let’s have that as a moral debate.” In other words, I was only commenting on cocaine’s classification as a performance-enhancing drug – that’s all.

5. “Lawrence Dallaglio never returned a positive drug sample.”
Read the article #3: not once do I say he did, in fact I was very careful not to write this, because I know he didn’t.

6. “As I recall, Dallaglio made the front page of the tabloids.”
Read the article #4: Exactly what I wrote (“Dallaglio, became tabloid fodder”), where I was careful to distinguish between his treatment by the tabloids and his treatment by the English rugby community.

7. “This sort of journalism is completely base”
If this is so, then what does that make your comments? (see points 2-6 above).

I will not respond to you again, so if you want to follow up with more abuse (you generally do), then the floor is yours.

Reply
Norm said | May 17th 2009 @ 10:19am | Report comment

Greg Russell has just ko’d KO.

Reply
Knives Out said | May 17th 2009 @ 10:24am | Report comment

I certainly wouldn’t consider any of my comments abusive, much as I wouldn’t consider yours journalistic.

1. What is your point? The Australian generic sports fan seems to delight in posting childish names. Do you criticise them? When in Rome.

2. IRONY.. That’s spelt I.. R.. O.. Although there is nothing scientific prose in your article, btw. Your article might have had relevance had you briefly and succintly differentiated between the effects of taking cocaine and performance enhancing drugs and hence given body to a rather flimsy argument.

3. There is no connection with cocaine and performance enhancing drugs – as your introduction suggests that WADA enforces. Clearly, one is an illegal substance due to societal requirements, the other because it is a performance enhancing drug. It goes without saying that WADA does not consider cocaine performance enhancing.

5. You suggest moral irregularity and purposeful ethical confusion – and never acually confirm that Dallaglio was relieved of the charges held against him by the media. You also suggest some form of weak fascism, ‘Poor Matt Stevens – presumably because he’s a South African’ and class elitism, ‘ the gin-n-tonic brigade’. Is that honestly insightful, responsible or appropriate work? It certainly is not.

6. I don’t think so. Please articulate how.

7. I am not passing myself off as a sports correspondent. But hey, that Sam Wykes… he’s a great player.

Reply
Knives Out said | May 17th 2009 @ 10:36am | Report comment

Btw, who are the unlucky men? Is Mr. Russell suggesting that cocaine should not be banned in sport? Is Mr. Russell wrong to suggest that WADA are incorrect in enforcing the laws of our land/s in sport? Is that ethical subversion by numbers? I’m not sure what this article is telling me? Sport makes people healthy, drugs don’t. Can I take drugs and take part in sport and be A-OK? Should our heroes be able to take heavy duty drugs without the population knowing and not be banned from their respective sport – when if you or I were to be found under the influence at work we would be made redundant? Is that ok? Is it fair that Dallaglio – who never took drugs – was only stripped of his captaincy and hounded by the press, when the SA Matt Stevens was sacked from his job for actual illegal drug taking? Would Phil Waugh be absolved if he were in Stevens’s shoes?

Reply
Greg Russell said | May 17th 2009 @ 10:52am | Report comment

For those in any doubt (and who are prepared to base their opinions on facts), here is an excerpt froma recent article on the Boonen case:

“That position was confirmed by WADA spokesman Frédéric Donze, who told VeloNews that cocaine is among a class of stimulants whose use is banned only in competition.
“If you look at the 2008 WADA Prohibited List, you will find a category named ‘Substances and Methods Prohibited In-Competition’ (i.e. only in-competition),” he wrote. “Cocaine is in section S. 6 Stimulants.”"

In other words, WADA classifies cocaine as a stimulant.

WADA bans the use of stimulants because it considers them performance enhancing.

All this may be confirmed at the WADA website.

Reply
Knives Out said | May 17th 2009 @ 10:57am | Report comment

Oh, I see. Clearly then, the WADA stance has absolutely nothing to do with moral necessity. Thank you empirical evidence. Does WADA consider Mary Jane a stimulant, one wonders?

Reply