Paul Lewis: Sports stars must take responsibility

Yanina Wickmayer's ban was overturned. Photo / AP

There are two words for Yanina Wickmayer on the subject of drug-testing: Marion and Jones.

Olympic and world champion sprinter Marion Jones, remember, tested negative 160 times before she was finally undone as a drugs cheat. Let's say that again - 160 times.

Wickmayer, the 20-year-old who will be one of the star turns when the ASB Classic tennis tournament opens tomorrow, protested that she was banned for a year for not complying with the World Anti Doping Authority's controversial "whereabouts" policy.

It asks athletes in all sports to say where they will be for one hour a day every day - so they can be tracked for random drugs tests.

Wickmayer missed three times and under WADA's "three strikes" policy, she was banned for a year by a Belgian tribunal. She got the lawyers on the job and had the ban overturned on appeal - and, when she arrived in Auckland, bitterly hit back that she had never been a drug taker. Indeed, she has never tested positive for anything.

Neither did Marion Jones. Not for 160 times. The cheats have been sophisticated and clever and stayed ahead of the authorities for years before the testing chemists caught up and the onus was shifted to the athletes. Which is precisely where it should be.

WADA's whereabouts rules might be inconvenient and possibly a little overbearing but - let's be frank - I don't give a big hairy rat's heinie if sports stars are a little incommoded by such requirements.

There's a third word for Wickmayer - responsibility.

She maintained she was a victim of poor communication and misdirected paperwork. She said in a press release that the failure to follow procedure was due to her not being able to log on to the relevant website, not being able to contact the right people when needed, and not being in the country when mail arrived advising her of the problems.

She had a crack at Belgian tennis authorities saying they treated players "a little bit like robots" and said she was in favour of drug testing but not of the way her home country tennis people treated her.

There's a feeling that a bit of 20-year-old naivete is mixed up in all this. It all sounds like a whining teenager protesting that it is everyone's fault but her own; behaving like an ostrich and putting her head in the sand, thereby exposing her thinking parts, as George Carman QC once famously said of British politician David Mellor.

Wickmayer is ranked 16 in the world. She came to prominence when she made the semifinals of last year's US Open. She has won more than US$830,000 so far in a fledgling career.

She wants to fly round the world, playing the big tournaments, taking sponsors' coin and earning money in endorsements. She is tall and graceful and with a distinctive shriek-grunt when she hits the ball. She has it all in front of her.

With potential fame and riches comes responsibility. If Wickmayer doesn't have a manager or someone to look after her interests while she gets on with the business of hitting a ball, she should. If she does, maybe she needs a new one.

It was naive, too, because former tennis champion Andre Agassi has just written a book in which he outlines how he took P, failed a drug test, but got out of it by writing a lying, toadying letter to tennis authorities. There were also the Martina Hingis and Richard Gasquet drugs controversies in recent times.

Tennis is under the drugs spotlight, same as every other sport, and international sportspeople have a responsibility to front up, even if it is inconvenient and sometimes impractical.

We all have rules we don't like. In a brilliant example of Sod's Law, my mobile now rings every time I get in the car and start driving. I don't like the fact that the speed limit in the Dome Valley is 80km/h and the miserable cop who gave me a ticket for speeding took the lazy option of just plucking the poor bozo who hadn't noticed the limit (me) off the end of a line of closely-bunched cars, all speeding. But that's life and them's the rules. You break them and they bite you.

Wickmayer needs to grow up and take responsibility.

While we are on the subject, how about all those cringing apologists who witter on about privacy and intrusion regarding the "whereabouts" system?

Spare me. If the law was as soft as they'd like it to be, it wouldn't work. It wasn't working. Okay, maybe WADA's rules need a little tweaking but the burden has to be on the athletes to prove they are not guilty. It's the only way, even if it is the reversal of the old presumption of innocence. We tried that one. Didn't work.

It was like old softy Sergeant Wilson from Dad's Army, asked to make the men fall in and who said: "I wonder if you'd mind awfully forming three lovely lines over there..." We all know what happens then.

Why is this important? Because of the cheats and the greed. Because fans everywhere want a level and fair playing field.

Don't get me started on the morons who advocate that the so-called 'recreational' drugs are not performance-enhancing and therefore shouldn't be subject to the same rules as steroids and blood-doping and whatnot.

No, sorry. Professional sportspeople have an unwritten pact with fans, sponsors, coaches, clubs and country - that they represent club, province and country in the best possible shape.

If they want to pack their trunks with magic whoopee powder or smoke P, let them do it when they've retired.

I want to watch a sportsman, not a person who earns so much money it goes up their nose; a derisive signal that they value neither the fans nor the sport they play; caring only about themselves and their designer lifestyles.

Want to inject furniture polish directly into the brain? Wow, what a buzz. Go ahead. But do it when you have finished being a professional. Leave a legacy, not snot trails.

It's a funny thing - human nature, I suppose - but the majority of those who advocate no or lesser penalties for recreational drugs for sportspeople seem to be those who use them themselves.

In any case, it's illogical. It's like being done for drink-driving but asking for a lesser sentence because you got slammed on beer, not gin.