Shooting: Australians shoot themselves in the foot in a big way over drug row

By DAVID LEGGAT

Say what you like about Australians, but they have a way of cutting to the chase.

Australia's most successful Commonwealth Games athlete, pistol shooter Phillip Adams, had returned a positive test to a banned diuretic.

But even thought he was found guilty by the Australian Shooting Tribunal on Thursday, he was cleared to compete in the Games.

The logic apparently was that his performance was not enhanced by the drug Avapro HCT - which is used to treat high-blood pressure.

That method of adjudication sounded a bit nudge-nudge, wink-wink, and no sooner had Adams, a ruddy-faced farmer from Forbes, New South Wales, taken his seat in front of a microphone than the assembled media pack were off and running, the smell of blood in the air.

"Why haven't you stood down from the Australian team?" boomed the man from Sky TV at the back of the room.

Bang. Just like that.

"Isn't there the question of integrity ... Australia would expect the same of every other nation competing here?" came the follow-up.

Then: "Every time this comes up, you've got an excuse.

"Why should we accept this one now," from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Adams was surrounded at the top table by an assortment of minders, but it soon became apparent they had not got their stories straight.

There was the team's medical director, Dr Peter Fricker, who was calmness personified for 40 minutes before exploding; Australia's chef de mission, Don Stockins, the very personification of the possum in the spotlight; and the shooting section manager, who laid his cards out quickly by explaining he was deaf in one ear and not allowed to comment on behalf of his sport.

Adams, competing in his sixth Commonwealth Games and with 17 medals to his name (seven gold, eight silver and two bronze) had taken the legal drug Avapro for a long time.

His country doctor had inadvertently prescribed the other one, which has three letters after it, which is not legal.

This then managed to evade several levels of scrutiny.

So it didn't take long for the obvious question to be asked: Who stuffed up?

Several minutes of muddled explanation followed.

Adams, with his thick grey thatch, bristling moustache and unerring eyes, said, "It's just a mistake" before hinting darkly that he would be calling for a word with his doctor when he got back to the farm in Australia.

But the message seemed to be that no one in particular was to blame.

"No system is perfect. Look at the government," Adams offered, but his attempts at the lighthearted touch were going down like a failed souffle, politics not being his thing.

Australia's reputation for being quick to point the finger at other countries on doping issues was coming back to haunt them.

At the 25-minute mark the balloon went up. Big time.

Whenever Adams was answering a question, the officials had been turning their heads and watching closely, almost expecting the blunt-speaking farmer to put his foot in it.

Sure enough, it came when Adams, almost as an afterthought, let slip that he had been using the banned drug for two years.

There followed about four seconds in which you could hear a pin drop.

Then all hell broke loose.

But that means, Phil, that every event you've won in that time is a dud?

Any sympathy for the Australian case - and there wasn't much to start with - was gone.

It was around that time a question was answered with:

"Perhaps you'd like to answer that, Don?"

"Perhaps you'd like to answer that, Phil?"

"Perhaps you'd like to answer that, Ray?" (Ray being the shooting section manager who couldn't comment.)

Stockins offered the thought that it was "not good this process happened on the opening day of the Games".

"We could do without it, that's for sure."

Dead right there, Don.

At the 44-minute mark it finally became too much for the doctor.

Being asked for any precedents for an athlete who tested positive for a banned substance being "let off scot free" was the final straw.

"That's a bullshit question. It's crap. It's not relevant."

Excuse me?

So, Phil, will this ruckus put you off your shot here?

A long pause, fixing the questioner with those steely eyes, then: "No."

It was all over soon after, the team management taking the wrong exit and having to retrace their steps through the media centre. That seemed appropriate.

As political sporting theatre it was A-grade entertainment and if the management thought they would defuse this particular bombshell in one quick hit they were wrong.

As they left the room an Australian journalist turned to a colleague.

"What are you going to do, mate? You going to knife him?"

"Too right," came the reply.

Full coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/manchester2002

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