Drugs: We're not that dopey, thanks doc

By BILL BRYSON

Of the approximately 657,400 Olympic-related facts that have come before me in the past couple of weeks, two in particular struck me as especially remarkable.

The first was the news that if the great American swimmer Buster Crabbe, winner of the 1932 men's 400m freestyle, had swum in the present Games at the same pace he did in 1932 (and admittedly this would be asking a lot as he has been dead for many years), he would have lost to Ian Thorpe by two full pool lengths. Isn't that amazing? In fact, the only person at the Olympics he would have beaten was that endearing fellow from Equatorial Guinea, Eric Moussambani, who swam as if entangled in invisible ropes.

(Which suggests in turn, of course, that if Moussambani had been swimming in 1932, he might have enjoyed a sparkling career).

Now my second remarkable finding. It was in a news brief in one of the papers, which said in full: "Qatar has paid $1 million to the Bulgarian weightlifting federation for eight weightlifters."

No other details are provided, so it is possible that I misunderstand the significance of this transaction. It may be simply that the Qataris have some heavy objects that need moving. But I take it to mean that Qatar is trying to buy itself some medals in future Olympics. (And, though it is none of my business, on the basis of Bulgarian weightlifting performances so far, I would suggest that they keep those boys away from the medicine cabinet).

I must confess that I was astounded to learn that such a thing is permissible. But I have looked into the matter and it appears that it is. An athlete may compete for another country if his or her home athletics federation agrees to it.

Anyway, it struck me that those two things pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the modern Olympics - namely, that competitors just keep getting better and better and that some people are prepared to go to the most ridiculous lengths to get a piece of the glory. My worry is that the pursuit of the latter may ruin the former. Already 20 competitors or coaches have been sent packing from Sydney for failing various drugs tests, and have slunk home in shame after amusing us briefly with their desperate excuses: that their toothpaste was tampered with or that they hoped their hair would re-sprout if they brought with them enough growth hormone to fill a plunge pool.

And now I find my own national track and field squad facing much the same sort of censure. It will not have escaped your notice that C.J. Hunter, the American shot putter and husband of the track star Marion Jones, was found in a recent test to have a thousand times the normal levels of a very naughty anabolic steroid called nandrolone sloshing around inside his ample frame. It would have taken a large tube of toothpaste indeed to get that volume of a banned substance inside him inadvertently, so it seems pretty evident that there are grounds to regard Mr Hunter dubiously.

And what has been the response of the US Olympic Committee? As of this writing, it is standing by Hunter, maintaining that he has "not been convicted of anything" - that is, not by it - and is continuing to seek to restore his accreditation as a respected member of the Olympics family.

Meanwhile, Hunter's main sponsor, Nike, has also offered him its "unmitigated support," thereby lending a whole new resonance to the slogan "Just do it."

A cynic might conclude that our policy towards drugs in America is to send users either to prison or to the Olympics. This is not quite so, but we do seem to be employing a double standard.

In July, as you may recall, the former director of drug control for the USOC, Wade Exum, stated that half the US track and field competitors in Atlanta had previously tested positive for illegal substances and that the US authorities had done nothing about it.

More recently, Arne Ljundqvist, the chief medical officer of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, accused USA Track and Field, the governing body in the affair, of covering up 12 to 15 positive drug tests among its athletes over the past two years.

Mr Hunter, it is worth noting, had been found with elevated steroid levels on four separate occasions in recent months, none of which the American authorities thought worth mentioning to the IOC.

So plenty of grounds for outrage among American journalists? Well, not necessarily. Sally Jenkins, of the Washington Post, argued vigorously in a comment piece that Olympic drug-testing policies are flawed and unfair - she cites, not unreasonably, the case of the young Romanian gymnast who lost her gold medal for taking a cold tablet prescribed by her doctor - and that testing is inconsistently implemented. In consequence, she professes to find the drug controversies just a little tiresome.

"Personally," she writes, "I couldn't tell a dose of nandrolone from provolone, or a batch of pseudoephedrine from Excedrin. And I don't really care."

I'm no chemist, but let me see if I can help here. Provolone is a tasty Italian food and Excedrin is a brand of proprietary medicine for headaches. Nandrolone and pseudoephedrine, on the other hand, are highly illegal drugs sometimes used by athletes who wish to give themselves a boost over competitors who are too cautious or principled to enjoy an illicit triumph. None of my business again, but I suspect it is something that Ms Jenkins and many others should care about very much. I hate to sound like a Boy Scout here (or indeed anywhere), but it does seem to me that the Olympics are supposed to be about people doing the right thing, and setting an example for others in a spirit of fair play.

In practice, alas, the attitude too often for Americans is that the Olympics, along with all other sporting ventures, are about winning at any cost. I love American sport and admire its achievements - I would put Jesse Owens up against any sporting hero produced by any nation anywhere - but there is a side of it that often makes me recoil. It's the side that comes up with all those slogans like "Winning isn't the main thing - it's everything" and "You don't so much win silver as lose gold."

It's the spirit that allows you to create a Dream Team in basketball and not be even passingly regretful that their unquestioned but extremely well-paid talents have turned a once-exciting competition into a series of pointless exhibition matches, or that permits cyclists to turn up at an event, without a hint of embarrassment, with secret, super-engineered bikes that are technically within the limits of legality, but are essentially unbeatable and entirely divorced from any sense of fair competition. It is the feeling that winning is, when it comes down to it, even more important than being admired.

Nothing I can do about any of that.

However, when I see one of my national teams evidently persuading itself that rules on drug usage and disclosure should not apply to it in quite the way they do to others, and that a proper and reasonable course of action to take at this time is to try to get ol' C.J. back in the Olympic Village so he can continue to make pancakes for Marion, then I do despair, I must say.

That is, believe me, a whole lot dumber than telling the world that somebody put steroids in your toothpaste.