Cheats steal more than just gold

The name Pauline Davis-Thompson won’t mean anything to most readers. Even if I told you she was from the Bahamas you probably wouldn’t recognise the name unless you were a big athletics fans. That’s another clue, she was a sprinter. Got it yet? No?

Well Davis-Thompson won the gold medal in the 200m at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. However, she was not crowned champion after her race like most winners - she had to wait until December 2009 to get her medal.

You see the Bahamian sprinter came second in the race, she was beaten to first place by disgraced athlete Marion Jones, but when the American finally came clean about her deceitful career, Davis-Thompson got what she rightly deserved but it’s just not the same.

Davis-Thompson’s name may be down in the record books as the gold medallist but she was denied one of the greatest parts about being a gold medallist – the proud moment when you stand on top of the podium as your national anthem is played out and images of you with gold draped around your neck are sent around the world.

The sad thing is, she is one of many who have had this feeling over the years. In a way she is lucky she even got given a gold medal. So many haven’t.

They haven’t because the authorities failed to catch the cheats in time or at all. In Tom Humphries’ excellent book Laptop Dancing And The Nanny Goat Mambo: A Sportswriter’s year, he speaks about Shirley Babashoff one of swimming’s greatest but never managed a gold medal in an individual event.

Simply because she faced the East Germans in the 1970s, a time where they were so drugged up, it was lucky they didn’t dissolve when they entered the pool.

Shirley never got what she deserved but she did pull off a remarkable feat to win the 4x100m relay with her American team-mates in one of swimming’s greatest races at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Babashoff deserved more, she deserved a level playing field.

More recently, the 1996 Atlanta Games will forever be remembered in Ireland but sadly for the wrong reasons. We all read the stories about Michelle de Bruin (Smith).

We didn’t realise at the time that it’s not possible for a swimmer ranked 90th in the world to jump up to be a three-time Olympic champion in a couple of years, not within the rules of sport at least.

We were blinded by her story, we should have seen through it.

Many berated American swimmer Allison Wagner when she publically claimed that De Bruin was not doing it the legit way. How wrong we were. De Bruin, or Smith as she was then, still holds the three gold medals and Wagner, Marianne Limpert and Dagmar Hase never got what they merited having finished second to a cheat.

There’s too many cases to mention and then there is those who missed out on Bronze medals because of the cheats. I could be here all day. But I won’t bore you no more. I’ll get to my point.

A recent article in The Daily Telegraph, correctly points out that fans are also the ones who lose out to these cheats.

Speaking about Marion Jones and about the recent Pakistan cricket controversy, the make the bid that fans should be repaid ticket costs if events turn out to be fixed or competitors have cheated.

I agree, it’s a fantastic idea and would mean that governing authorities would clamp down on cheating a lot harder if they knew they were going to be out of pocket.
However, they should be focusing on protecting honest athletes, not just their bank balances.

I can only imagine the pain athletes go through after years upon years of dedication, early morning training sessions, sacrifice after sacrifice and put all their love into a sport, only to beaten to a gold medal or a world championship.

But then to have that pain compounded in later years to find out the ‘sportsperson’ who beat them was filled full of drugs, must be life shattering.

They are the real losers and they are the ones who suffer the true heartbreak. They have dedicated their lives to one thing – their sport – and they have been betrayed and let down by the governing bodies.

Fans turn up, pay their money and, while they play their part, they’ll soon get over it if a cheat wins but those who competed against them will never lose that feeling of injustice.

Those in second, third and fourth are not even thought of when drug scandals break out. They never get their moment, they are the ones that need the refund but sadly you cannot give back time and effort, even if they had a receipt.

I feel for any Pakistan cricket supporter that paid money to see their team play against England, I feel for any fan who handed over cash to watch an Olympic final won by Marion Jones but their loss isn’t even comparable to the athletes' loss.

Boxing needs to knock out the cheats

It’s time all governing bodies of professional boxing began to clean up the sport and dispell any chance of cheats prevailing in the game.

It is amazing how, with so much money ploughed into the sport, that testing is so easy-going in comparison to other sports.

Cycling and athletics are often referred to as ‘dirty’ with the highest rates of failed drugs tests.

However, while at university I produced a drugs and sport publication that, with interviews from across various sports, proved that whilst they may have the most failed samples, cycling has the most stringent of testing procedures.

It’s selective as well as random, meaning that less competitors can miss or avoid testing with both blood and urine samples mandatory.

However, in professional boxing they do not follow similar 'Olympic-style testing' and do not insist on blood samples -instead they just take urine samples in the run-up, and straight after contests.

Cycling has tarnished its imagine by cleaning it up in the hope it will cleanse the sport from the cheats, while ensuring fair and rewarding competitions for honest competitors.

Professional boxing needs to follow cycling’s example and ensure that fans can watch the sport confident that the champions that are being crowned are true winners.

The recent spat between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao has brought this situation to light and, while I agree it would have been unfair on the latter to submit to the demands put forward, blood testing has to come into play soon.

Victor Conte, the man who supplied Dwain Chambers and many other athletes with performance enhancing substances that for years went unnoticed, has come out and said that professional boxing testing is useless.

“The testing that is being utilised in boxing is virtually worthless," Conte told BBC Radio 5 live. The testing that is being utilised in boxing is virtually worthless," Conte told BBC Radio 5 live.

"I don't believe they want to know how rampant the use of drugs really is," said Conte. "Testing in boxing is completely and totally inept."

While Conte’s comments are not good news, what the head of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), David Howman has said is even more worrying for fans of boxing.

He said: "Professional boxing is not in compliance and has made no effort to comply.

"They give the boxer every opportunity to hide what they may have taken previously and that is not the way the world operates these days."

The fact that professional boxing organisations are refusing to comply may mean that there is plenty to hide.

The governing bodies may be worried what effect a string of failures could have on the sport’s image that has already been tarnished by the amount of corruption prevailing in the game.

However, if they fail to bring in tougher testing then fans are going to start doubting the credentials of the fighters competing, especially after the claims by the Mayweather camp about Pacquaio’s apparent steroid use.

Of course, the amount of money on the line at the top level must mean that the purses are fairly won, but testing should also be much more strict because of the health danger that is carried by participating in boxing.

If a boxer is going into the ring against someone who has used a performance enhancing substance then their life is more at risk due to the fact that the drug may have made the cheating opponent stronger and/or fitter than they should be, thus giving the ability to cause more damage.

It is time professional boxing cleaned up and followed the examples of the amateur side of the game, athletics, cycling and other sports that follow 'Olympic-style testing' for the sake of the promoters that financially back it, the health of the fighters that compete and the fans that pay the money that helps keep the sweet science going.