|
|
Wednesday, September 27
Hunter news was well-timed leak
By Mark Kreidler
Special to ESPN.com
SYDNEY, Australia -- At the news conference called to vaguely defend himself against charges that he was acting this summer as a human cargo freight for nandrolone, the shot-putter and famous husband C.J. Hunter had tears rolling down his cheeks. These would have been to somewhat more dramatic effect had your eye not constantly wandered over to another part of the room, where a man sat very conspicuously wearing a lime-green jacket.
|  | | C.J. Hunter met the media in Sydney on Tuesday. |
Handy rule of thumb for future athletes caught in drug scandals: When proclaiming your innocence, it is often advantageous not to have Johnnie Cochran standing by as "a friend of the family."
I couldn't tell you with absolute certainty about Hunter, which explains a lot about the state of the drug-testing programs worldwide. I mean, the man clocked in at 1,000 times the allowed amount of the steroid in his system five days after testing completely clean at the U.S. Track and Field Trials in July. What'd he do, just sprinkle the stuff directly into his urine sample?
The drug program right now is a quagmire of differing policies and, frankly, about 17-times too many stuffed shirts. They loathe each other, and I mean this in the nicest possible way. But the larger point here is that the Hunter story broke in Sydney, just this week, for no particular reason. He had already withdrawn from the U.S. Olympic team and was here strictly to be with Marion Jones. The IAAF, the worldwide governing body for track, wasn't going to derail the Games by announcing Hunter's test results here; it only became involved after it confirmed the reports that had already been made to circulate in the media.
This, one could argue, begs the question of the timing of the news.
And the answer, I think, is marvelously clear: The rest of the world has come to hate our guts.
There's no doubt about it: The international athletic community is sick of American arrogance on the drug issue, and it is tired of the perception of Americans as mostly above it. And it is especially sick and tired of situations such as happened at poolside last week, when, in the immediate aftermath of another world record by Dutch swimmer Inge De Bruijn, U.S. women's swim coach Richard Quick suddenly announced that his "intuition" told him these were not a clean Games. Look, ma, no implication here!
A few days later, an Australian paper was leaked word of Hunter's positive drug tests -- which, again, had absolutely no bearing on any Olympic competition here, unless you're debased enough to assume that Marion Jones would risk everything she has in the world to join in Hunter's steroid use (what, she wants to win the 200 by 10 meters instead of seven?). You didn't have to be an IOC delegate to understand that the leak was timed to embarrass the U.S. while on the global stage; it came at almost exactly the same moment that IOC officials were busy accusing the Americans of serially covering up their athletes' positive results for years.
The U.S. response was so convoluted that it doesn't even bear rehashing here, but suffice it to say that it included a lengthy news conference in which Craig Masback, who runs USA Track & Field, set a new indoor record for use of the phrase "I have not been made aware". American officials are fond of noting that our system of presuming innocence and protecting due process will not defer to some global pressure to name names every time someone fails a drug test, but that is only being perceived worldwide as a fancy excuse for us to continue protecting our guilty long enough for them to win us some more gold medals.
Put it this way: Florence Griffith Joyner has been dead for two years, and people are still trying to get a positive test out of her. In several newspaper references this week, Joyner was mentioned as someone who was a likely drug cheat but for whom the U.S. covered up. It's hard to shout down an accusation that, very essentially, can neither be proved nor disproved.
Writing in The Australian newspaper Wednesday, columnist Patrick Smith said: "This does give us a chance to tell U.S. swim coach Richard Quick that he is stupid ... Quick, my man, in the light of developments over the past 48 hours, it might pay to have a look in your backyard. But watch where you walk."
Not only was Smith right, but you had the overwhelming feeling that he was speaking for a vast network of athletes, coaches, officials and IOC delegates who want to see the Americans hoist on their own petard on this issue. In the prominently connected but, alas, not so bright C.J. Hunter, they found a perfect foil.
Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a Web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.
|  | |
ALSO SEE
Kreidler: U.S. swimmers' road dominance
Kreidler: You think NBC's having trouble...
Wojnarowski: Sweet games turn sour
|
