It takes only a word to destroy the thrill of watching any Olympic feat. The word is drugs.
The mere suspicion that we might be watching something more than a superbly fit and supremely talented human being is enough to drain most people's interest entirely.
Sports administrators know it, which is why they remain deaf to the defeatists who say top-level sports are now so riddled with performance-enhancing substances that drugs might as well be accepted.
The International Olympic Committee runs a constant race against the incursion of ever more sophisticated substances. No fewer than 4000 drug tests were planned for the Sydney Games, including the introduction of a blood test that can detect one of the more recent forms of widespread cheating, the blood booster erythropoietin.
Dozens of athletes, including a British cyclist, a German track champion and 27 members of China's team, withdrew from the Games rather than face the range of tests at Sydney.
Another nine competitors have been suspended since the testing began. They include wrestlers from Egypt and Morocco, an Iranian boxer, a swimmer from Kazakhstan and four weightlifters, two of them from Romania.
The Romanians were the second and third members of their weightlifting team to test positive for drugs this year. Under the International Weightlifting Federation's "three strikes and you're out" rule, the entire team ought to have been barred from the Olympics.
Unfortunately, it seems they can stay. The IOC has allowed the other four members of the team to stay and compete because the Romanian Olympic Committee will pay a fine of $NZ121,270 to the International Weightlifting Federation. That may be acceptable by the rules of weightlifting, but it is not up to Olympic standard.
When two members of a team in any sport are found to be doped, it is reasonable to suspect the rest of the team could be in the same state.
If the International Weightlifting Federation is content to let national organisations pay their way out of a drug ban, the Olympic authorities should not be.
They know weightlifting continues to be one of their most troublesome events for drug abuse. No wonder, if cash can make amends for a national organisation found to be harbouring cheats.
And drug-taking in sport is cheating, as musty as any deliberate attempt to steal an advantage forbidden under the rules of a game.
There are those who wonder why international sports administrators continue to wage war on drugs. After all, say the rationalists, top athletes are not ordinary human beings.
They train and mould their bodies for their sport using every physical, mechanical and dietary advantage they can find. Why not let them use any sort of chemical assistance, too?
There are health reasons to discourage performance-enhancing drugs but then, the contrary argument goes, athletes strain themselves in legitimate ways that can also affect their health in later life. Why make an issue of chemical and biological aids?
The public distaste for drugs in sport is beyond reach of rationality, just like sport itself. Sport is not a matter of life and death, health, well-being or economic survival. Drugs that relieve pain and strain, assist recovery or enhance performance are far more easily accepted in the necessary activities of life. Sport is not one of those, except for those who earn their living by it, and professionalism has required greater vigilance against drugs.
To the spectator, at least, sport remains a pastime, a game of arbitrary rules and ideals that may surpass those of real life. So in sport, we like to see members of whatever species competing to the full natural potential of their strengths and skills. We can appreciate all sorts of performance-enhancing techniques and training regimens, but we cannot tolerate chemical boosts.
Perhaps we are naive. The temptations of pharmacology seem to be always one step ahead of the sporting police. Now that the IOC has drug tests for blood-boosters, there is concern about new and not-yet-detectable doses of human growth hormone. The quest to clean up modern sport is never-ending. But if administrators ever give up the chase, their sport will be the loser.
<i>Editorial:</i> A blemish on the 'clean' Olympics
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