Opinion
It will be a tragedy for Australian sport if Peter Bol’s B sample confirms the synthetic use of Erythropoietin (EPO), leading to a ban that may end his career.
Bol helped put Australia’s men on the global stage again with his fourth-place finish at the 2021 Olympic Games, a reminder of past great days for Australian male runners and the best result since Darren Clark placed fourth in the 400m in both 1984 and 1988.
Without casting doubt on Bol’s innocence, as someone who has followed athletics for years I believe it would be naïve for anyone to assume that all Australian athletes are clean, or that none will be tempted to push the boundaries to match and beat the world’s best.
The desire to keep up with the latest performance-enhancing drug (PEDs) strategies to beat the testing technology has long been evident.
In the early ’80s, I knew of Aussie athletes taking PEDs.
While the PED use may have not been systematic from the top down, and was limited to athletes and their key advisors, it was an era without out-of-competition (OOC) drug testing, where it was easy to pass the tests given the short clearance times needed to clear any use of anabolic steroids.
This was despite some illegal PED users being caught, including the shot putter Gael Martin at the Pan Pacific Conference Games, who received an 18-month ban before going on to win the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics.
Even after extensive testing was introduced in Australia following the Ben Johnson drug scandal of 1988, some Australian athletes adopted strategies that included the use of human chorionic gonadotropin to boost testosterone levels, growth hormone, EPO and other synthetic drugs before the testing regime caught up.
Most I knew who were cheating were not bad people. They were simply doing what they believed was necessary to succeed at the highest level.
Lance Armstrong has paid $5 million for his ‘crimes’. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Michael Paulsen
While drug testing (and intelligence about illegal PED use) continues to get better and better, a most welcome development as confirmed by the many top athletes that have been caught in recent times, the temptation to take PEDs remains.
Success within an environment where drug testing is imperfect is still not totally preventing PED use. Athletes near the top of their sport may have the realisation that any future progress can only come from drugs.
Testosterone and EPO occur naturally in the body, so it can be hard to catch those who have knowledge of avoiding detection, such as microdosing.
Even if Bol’s B-sample tests positive, it has been reported, via former sprinter Matt Shrivington, that the runner had “20 tests since this one (from October 11) as well, and only one of them has come back positive.”
While it is great that testing is much more extensive, PED use will persist.
I don’t like the reality that athletes still cheat, but I can understand why.
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