Athletics: Drug cheats irk Willis

Nick Willis celebrates his greatest win - the 1500m at the 2006 Commonwealth games. Photo / Chris Skelton

It is hard to imagine Nick Willis sitting still for the three-and-a-half hours required to watch a baseball game but, even if he could, he probably wouldn't.

It's not that he doesn't like the sport, the "national pastime" in his adopted homeland, the US; it's more the rancid smell that has wafted over the game since the excesses of the "steroid era" were fully exposed and the big names that are still being caught up in the drugs' dragnet.

"It's difficult for me sometimes to watch a baseball game because of all the stuff that goes on that you read in the papers," he says earnestly.

Which is what hurts him the most about the Rashid Ramzi affair, where the Beijing 1500m winner's A and B samples have turned up positive for a banned substance.

It's not so much the lost opportunity to stand on the second-highest dais in front of friends or family, to have silver draped over his garland rather than bronze, but the damage it does to his "beautiful" sport.

"I really hope that doesn't happen with fans watching our sport as well, you know, they turn off.

"It's never a good thing for the sport when things like this surface but at the same time it is great for the sport that, if there is cheating taking place, the testing has caught up."

Willis was originally reluctant to talk about the Ramzi issue at all until he is officially "punished" by the International Olympic Committee, the IAAF and WADA but Willis, although not naming the Moroccan-turned-Bahraini by name, cares too passionately about his sport to let it pass.

"Hopefully [Ramzi's positive test] will act as a deterrent in the future and will demonstrate to fans that those in charge of the sport are taking every possible measure to keep it a level playing field.

"I really applaud the efforts of the IOC and WADA to continue to fight the fight so future generations will continue to enjoy one of the most natural and beautiful sports there is.

"Who can jump the highest, run the fastest, throw the farthest, you know, that's what it is all about."

Willis desperately wants to be able to celebrate silver, the best result for a New Zealander on the track at the Olympics since Lorraine Moller won bronze in the marathon at Barcelona in 1992.

"It's a very difficult situation, to be honest. If the truth does come out, and I certainly want that to take place, it [getting silver] will be a reason to celebrate. People always want to see justice on the sports field.

"If that is the case I will be really excited but at the same time it is a sad day for the sport."

It is easy to sneer at his stated wish that athletics not become looked upon like the steroid-tainted baseball - the words "horse", "gate" and "bolted" spring to front of mind. But in truth, middle-distance running has not suffered under the scrutiny the power-based branches of athletics have.

"It's always been so hard to say. You hear some things but you don't hear others."

If that sounds deliberately vague it is simply because, despite the rumours surrounding runners (particularly those with North African connections), Willis has never been exposed to the seamier side of the sport.

"People would always ask me, 'So how many times have you been offered the stuff?' But since I have come into the professional ranks I've never been privy to that sort of thing on a first-hand basis. It does make me think it probably isn't as prevalent as the media made it out to be," he says.

"In these days of increased media, cellphones and internet, it's definitely become more difficult to keep things private. The truth tends to come out and then spread like wildfire.

"It's certainly not as prevalent as it once was, back in the days when there was systematic doping that the East Germans have now admitted to back in the '70s."

Given that Ramzi was obviously the class of the field going into the final, it seems fair enough to ask whether Willis still feels ripped off, whether he would have planned his race differently had there not been such a head-and-shoulders favourite?

"It's impossible to know what you would have done. You base your race on where you're placed after the first 80 metres.

"It's where you find yourself in the pack and from there you make judgement calls based on that. It's going to be different every time."

BRONZE OR silver, it doesn't really alter the fact that Willis' Beijing campaign was a moment of personal triumph, one that he revisits frequently.

"My uncle [Bill O'Brien] put together an awesome DVD for us that recaps all of the coverage New Zealand showed in the months leading up to Beijing and all the Olympic hoopla surrounding it.

"It's got the heat, the semi and final and the post-race wrap-up. It's fun, I go through it every now and then.

"Whenever new guests come over my wife [Sierra] likes to show people and whenever I sit down and need to do a stretching session but I'm struggling for motivation to put in an hour, I put it on the box and I get motivated pretty quickly."

He's had to satisfy himself with a lot of stretching lately. A hip injury put him out of trainers and into slippers and he has only recently returned to intensive training, too late to mount any sort of of Northern Hemisphere campaign.

That's frustrating, but not as bad as he privately feared before he sought surgery under the guidance of Dr Marc Philippon of the famous Steadman Hawkins Clinic at Vail, Colorado.

"We're big believers, myself, my coach, my management team, that surgery is the very last option - and that's what it was.

"I had given my hip seven weeks of no exercise and minimal weight bearing, trying to let time heal it and strengthening it by doing other exercises, but it got worse and worse to the point where I couldn't walk for more than a minute without considerable pain.

"There were fears that maybe it could have been arthritis or some significant cartilage damage. All of these thoughts started creeping into my mind and I started freaking out."

In stepped Dr Ruth Highet, a former NZOC medico, who recommended that a demoralised Willis seek help from Philippon.

"Within five minutes of seeing me he knew what I had. He's treated 6000 patients so he knew all the signs. He booked me into a surgical bed the next day."

For the next two weeks he lay there, watching all the skiers coming in from the playground of the wealthy with busted knees. Six weeks later he started jogging again.

"It was a challenge having never been through surgery in that invasive a manner before but it's something I wish I'd done earlier."

A decision to go the surgery route earlier might have allowed him a tilt at this year's world championships in Berlin, but the "silver lining" is that he has been able to do some "Lydiard-esque" training and has reassessed his goals, including a 800m-1500m Commonwealth Games campaign next year.

Given that Willis was a specialist 800m runner through his teens, it begs the question why he has never seriously attacked the double before.

"I never quite had the confidence in my speed against the hybrid 400m-type athlete who also ran the 800m," Willis says.

"They had this phenomenal speed and you automatically put yourself in a position of running from the back of the field.

"It wasn't a matter of choice or how you ran tactically but it was something you were forced into doing and that's never a fun thing to do. As I've gotten older that's become less of an issue."

That's a wee way off yet. At present, he is just happy to be back among the trails near his Ann Arbor, Michigan, home, nursing shin splints and blisters as he starts to put miles back on his clock.

"All of that is very manageable on a day-to-day basis but I've got to be careful not to create any new injuries by jumping in too quickly."

Hence Willis' decision not to launch a belated world championship campaign.

"My hip doesn't give me any trouble if I'm doing what I consider a normal 'going for a run' pace, which is between 3m 40s and 4m 20s kilometres, but if I were to put on spikes and get to race pace, then my hip would probably flare up again with some tendinitis.

"I need to give that more time. When I next race I don't want there to be any element of gambling on my fitness.

"I haven't had the luxury of putting in five or six months of foundation work like this in the past because we normally race through until the end of September. This is something that will pay big dividends in my career so although I'd love to be racing now, you've got to look for the silver lining.

"Obviously, I miss not competing and challenging myself to see how good I can get. It's like playing tennis against your mates and backyard cricket - you want the competition and you want to win.

"But the biggest thing I missed when I was rehabbing was just getting outside and getting on the trails.

"It's an addiction."

And not a needle or vial in sight.