Dope cheats: Living in denial

Liza Hunter-Galvan finally owned up to taking performance-enhancing drugs. Photo / Getty Images

I'm sorry if I disappointed people. I made a terrible mistake." So said double-Olympian Liza Hunter-Galvan, after the Sports Tribunal banned her for two years for doping.

The United States-based marathon runner took the blood-boosting, endurance-enhancing drug erythropoietin (EPO) and so became only the second New Zealand representative in recent times caught deliberately cheating (after Russian-born pole vaulter Denis Petouchinski, was caught on the steroid stanozolol at the 1998 Commonwealth Games).

A statement released by Hunter-Galvan's lawyer, Howard Jacobs, said she did not want to "take the path chosen by many athletes faced with a positive test and deny that she had taken EPO".

That's fine, but it should be noted that her admission came only after she had exhausted opportunities to escape on a technicality.

She hired Jacobs, the attorney who worked unsuccessfully to clear Floyd Landis, the first winner of the Tour de France to be stripped of his yellow jersey for doping.

She requested her B sample be tested, requested to inspect the packaging of both her A and B samples - all of which is the athlete's right but which, in light of her eventual admission, can only be construed as the search for an opportunity to stop the truth coming out.

And when the game was up, she requested a penalty discount for an early admission when she made no early admission. Still, when finally faced with the alternative of living a lie, she chose to admit it and for that deserves credit - because many do not.

The Encyclopedia Britannica classifies "denial" as "defence mechanism, human psychology". It is, it says, a conscious refusal to perceive that painful facts exist.

For Freud, denial was a defence against external realities that threaten the ego, and many psychologists argue that it can be a protective defence in the face of unbearable news, such as a cancer diagnosis.

For someone whose self-esteem is tightly wrapped up in being seen to be an elite world athlete, having that label replaced with that of drug cheat can be traumatic.

But could they truly become unconscious of the fact that they doped? That raises the distinction between denial and lying; the first relates to duping yourself, the second to fooling others.

"We all have private and public selves," says Ian Lambie, an Auckland University psychologist with specialties in sport and forensics. "You have people, like [former parliamentarian] Graham Capill, who was a Christian but abused children. He had an image to protect. People engaged in sport have an image to protect as well."

There is the pressure of the fans and, if their success in sport is lucrative, a financial incentive to deny.

Graeme Steel, the head of Drug Free Sport New Zealand, suspects many sportspeople rationalise away the burden of lying along with their doping.

"It becomes a self justification," he says. "[Some] come up with this idea that everybody else is doing it and therefore it is okay. It is appropriate because that's what they need to do to compete, and it ceases to be wrong in their mind."

"I actually think it is an automatic human response to deny these days," says David Howman, the Kiwi who heads the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency. "It is not limited to athletes who are effectively caught red-handed.

"We have seen people talk themselves into situations where they blatantly deny that they have ever taken a banned substance and yet, like Marion Jones, spill major tears when they are eventually found out.

"I think the public is probably sick of the nonsense stories, certainly we have a list of major excuses which when seen in the cold light of day are pretty pathetic."

For some, deceit is corrosive, for others it is water off a duck's back.

How easy it is to live with big lies depends on individual personality.

It doesn't bother narcissistic types or those with anti-social personality disorder, says Lambie. "From a young age some individuals at the extreme level have learned that rather than being dysfunctional, [deceit] is coping behaviour, part of their repertoire, and they don't see it as a problem."

The public is familiar with psychopathy in grisly crime but, believes Lambie, much less aware of its wider presence.

What characterises psychopathic personality? "Lack of empathy and a callousness and a cold selfish disregard, a glib superficial charm, conning, manipulating, lying."

Not only does the stigma of their wrongdoing weigh less on such types but they also get over it more quickly.

It remains to be seen how Hunter-Galvan copes. She's said that running is integral to her life. Now 40, she's got faster as she has aged, posting her personal best time (2h29m37s) a few months before her failed doping test. But she won't run again on the biggest stage the New Zealand Olympic Committee has ruled her out of the 2012 London Olympics.

"From her point of view, I guess if nothing else she was seen as being a doughty fighter," says Steel. "She fought City Hall and won [overturning initial non-selection to make the team for the past two Olympics] and there is some kudos in that, but that all goes by the board. In the end that adds to the negativity of it all because she was supported in that [battle]."

In sport, and perhaps in life generally, prompt confessions are rare. One came from Oscar Camenzind, the Swiss former world road cycling champion. Caught on EPO before the 2004 Olympics, Camenzind apologised, retired and pedalled home to his old job as a postie.

Whatever his state of mind, he deserves credit for sparing us the bull.