Higher, Faster, Stronger. But mainly Higher.
The scourge of banned drugs will never again blight a modern
Olympics, summer or winter.
The International Olympic Committee has decided at a meeting in
Lucerne that all countries can use whatever drugs they can concoct
to make their athletes go higher, faster, stronger.
The decision was taken after a spate of positive drug tests took
some of the gloss off the recently-completed Sydney Games.
It is, in effect, an admission by the IOC that not only has the
cost of testing for banned drugs become prohibitive but that testing
methods simply cannot keep pace with the new designer drugs being
pumped out of the world's laboratories, both government-sanctioned
and private.
The "Drugs are now OK" edict was pushed through the
IOC meeting by its vice president, Canadian Dick Pound. His victory
on this controversial issue strengthens his chances of taking
over when current President Juan Antonio Samaranch abdicates in
the middle of next year to finally spend more time with his wife
and family.
"Our message to competitors at Athens in four years time
and at the winter games at Salt Lake City in between
is simple: pop 'em, inject 'em, wear 'em as patches if you want
til you drop if you think it's going to help you."
Pound said IOC members had decided that, instead of looking at
the downside of widespread drug taking in sport, "let's see
what advances can be made in sports performance and an understanding
of the physical capacities of the human body by the use of whatever
drugs the companies can come up with".
"It's like the United States space program of the 60s,"
Pound explained. "Sure it cost a lot of money and a lot of
people were opposed to it, but it did give us many advantages
now taken for granted in every-day life, such as Teflon coating
and the Apollo 13 movie."
Pound paid tribute to the United States Athletics Association
for working tirelessly behind the scenes to get the new ruling
through.
"The USAA first came to me during the Sydney Games and they
were absolutely livid with the world-record times being set over
and over again by Dutch couple Inge de Bruijn and Pieter van den
Hoogenband in the Sydney Olympic pool.
"They said the USAA's medical advisers had told the US team
it was absolutely impossible to take pseudo-methlyappleline-hydrate4-complexB2
version1.2 to that extent without it being detected or
fatal. As a result, the US team was restricted to half what the
Dutch pair were injecting on the orders of Pieter's dad, the sports
doctor at PSV Eindhoven where both swimmers train.
"That Aussie boy Thorpe was shattered too," Pound said.
"He was using even less than the Americans because he was
concerned about how fast his foot size was growing. And he ended
up losing his 200m crown and world record as a result."
Pound said he had heeded the USAA's plea that all the world's
sports people should be able to use the latest drug enhancements
available.
"When you think about it, there's the greatest sports nation
in the world saying, 'let's make it an even playing field. Just
because we've got the money and technical know-how to get our
athletes to pop thousands of legal pills a day to supplement naturally-produced
performance enhancers and get away with it even though it might
make their hymens misty, why should the Bulgarian weight lifters
be banned as a team just because the poor bastards are still using
60s drugs that are now, finally, being detected?'.
Pound added: "I was rendered a little emotion, I must admit,
when the USAA officials came up to me in Catalina's restaurant
and said, 'Dick, the US winning the most gold medals isn't the
most important thing at the Olympics; it's time all the nations
can compete as equals'."
Pound said a classic example was the embarrassing sight at the
Olympic pool of Eric "the Eel" Moussambani from some
forgettable African country struggling to complete 100 metres
of the pool.
"As far as we know, Eric was the only poor bastard at the
Olympics not on drugs," Pound said. "His wasn't a bad
time all things considered."
The IOC vice-president said a "Drugs are OK Policy"
would have prevented a series of other drug scandals at the Sydney
Olympics, including:
. World shot put champion Mr Marion Jones
showing the world's media a series of needle puncture marks and
claiming they were a knee surgery scar, after testing positive
for having 1000 times the allowed amount of the steroid nandrolone
in the average body and three times in his.
.the Hungarian hammer thrower and gold-medal
favourite Mihaela Leminte, being ordered off the field just before
the start of competition after she allegedly tested positive for
steroids abuse and eating more than half of her spare hammer-chain
during the warmups.
.French sprint star Marie Jose Perec's
emotional pre-race flight from the Olympic Village and Australia
after allegedly being accosted at her hotel in Darling Harbour
and getting another women on the French team pregnant.
.The Rumanian gymnast Andreaa Raducan being
stripped of her individual gold medal after her team doctor foolishly
gave her pseudo-ephedrine when what she wanted was the real thing.
.The entire China swimming team missing
the Olympics after turning up at Peking Airport and discovering
they'd forgotten their passports.