Paul Lewis: Ban black day for NZ sport

There's only one thing to say after Liza Hunter-Galvan became the first Olympic athlete in New Zealand history to be banned for EPO use: Ouch.

Drugs offenders are generally stories that happen elsewhere. As New Zealand-based Drug Free Sport chief Graham Steel said the other day, it is generally not the Kiwi way.

But with the Hunter-Galvan episode comes a right-next-door lesson how a career can be ended; how supporters can be hurt; how credibility can be ruined and how sportspeople can so easily blacken not only their own character but that of their sport.

Hunter-Galvan, now 40, is the New Zealand-born, US-based marathon runner who had marathon battles with Athletics New Zealand to be included in both the 2004 Athens Olympics and Beijing in 2008. She finished 51st in Athens, 35th in Beijing.

It was an emotive issue. Hunter-Galvan and her family had previously been involved in a horror car accident which left her daughter Amber with memory issues. Hunter-Galvan said in this newspaper she wanted to box on with her career to create new memories for her daughter.

There won't be many happy memories in this little lot. Hunter-Galvan has been banned for two years after admitting taking EPO - the blood-doping drug which allows the red corpuscles to carry more oxygen to the muscles and which has ready application for distance athletes.

Hunter-Galvan says she took EPO three times this year but had not previously done so - and that the rest of her career was "clean". She took a substance called Recormon but stopped taking it soon after because of possible side effects.

Steel has dismissed this, saying her actions were "a deliberate act of cheating". Even without that, how could any of us take Hunter-Galvan at her word now?

There was some admiration for Hunter-Galvan's fight to make the Olympics. She was supported by many people in athletics, some high profile, like Peter Snell and Lorraine Moller. Now it looks a mistake of Olympian proportions - even though there is no evidence she was on EPO or any other performance-enhancing drugs at Athens or Beijing.

But the suspicion will always be there now. That's the thing that lingers long after the drugs have left the system.

Athletes in the news say a lot of things, some of which can rebound nastily. Hunter-Galvan told the Duluth News Tribune when she was blocked from selection for Beijing because she couldn't make the top 16: "It's against the whole Olympic charter ... it's absolutely ridiculous because that's not what the Olympics is founded on. It's founded on bringing the best people from around the world, not the best people in the world."

Whoops. Well, we all know the Olympics isn't founded on EPO. High-sounding phrases tend to get scattered to the wind when it turns out the eloquent and principled speaker has been dabbling in doping.

An interview she gave to a San Antonio newspaper also involved her coach who proudly told how, despite her relatively advanced age for an athlete, Hunter-Galvan's times began to plummet. One 10,000m race left her coach stunned.

"She ran a minute faster. It's like 15 years later, and she's a minute faster," he was quoted as saying. "In my 27, 28 years of coaching, I've had some kids do really well. But she's exceeded my expectations by a lot. It's been a huge performance increase for her. And yes, it happens - it just doesn't happen very often."

There was, he added, "no single reason" for her improvement. He speculated that hormonal changes brought about by childbirth also made a difference (she has four children). Again, there's nothing to suggest Hunter-Galvan was on EPO or anything else then. But it looks bad, doesn't it?

She's not the only athlete to be hoist by past statements. Sprint champ Justin Gatlin talked up the evils of drugs before he was caught and banned.

Even the great anti-drugs campaigner Carl Lewis was temporarily embarrassed in 2003 by revelations he had previously had a positive test for banned stimulants found in cold medication - before the US Olympic Committee drugs secretly accepted his explanation of inadvertent use and cleared him to run at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Hunter-Galvan's fall from grace underlines the tragedy of drug cheating - no matter what the motivation.

Four kids. Wonder what they think, Amber in particular?