Jim Ferstle: No Easy Answers

I asked Minnesota-based running writer Jim Ferstle, a reporter with special expertise covering doping issues in the sport, if he had any thoughts about the performance-enhancing drug issues that have swirled around some well-known Minnesota events of late. Here's what he wrote ...

No Easy Answers
By Jim Ferstle

As is often the case, unfortunately, the issues raised recently surrounding the participation of an athlete who had been suspended for a drug violation are complex and not subject to easy answers. The major problems the case illustrates is the desire to rid the sport of doping and the rights of individuals to compete in a sporting event. Central to all this is the question of how severe do the penalties for committing a doping violation have to be to serve as an adequate deterrent to sports doping?

Flora London Marathon race director Dave Bedford believes that draconian punishment is necessary. The IAAF athlete's commission, which includes among its members Paula Radcliffe, recommended at the recent IAAF Symposium on Anti-Doping that sanctions against athletes who had committed major doping violations should be increased. The World Marathon Majors(WMM) is implementing a policy to not invite or allow athletes convicted of a serious doping violation in their events. Last Fall, Asmae Leghzaoui, a Moroccan who had failed a drug test for use of rEPO(recombinant erythropoietin), was removed from a half marathon in Philadelphia. The promoters of the major track meets in Europe have declared that they will not invite athletes that have been implicated in doping scandals to their events.

Thus far there has been no legal action by athletes who have been banned, served their sentence, but have been denied entry into the elite fields of races, but civil libertarians wonder about the legal standing of such practices. Opinions differ about exactly what rights athletes have to participate in elite events that are, essentially invitation-only affairs. Do the restrictions violate any provisions of the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act? What are the rights and obligations of event promoters and athletes? The WMM directors are drafting a code of conduct for athletes who participate in their events that would cover this area, but do they have the right to impose any rules they deem necessary on the athletes? Perhaps more important, what constitutes a serious/major doping violation that would trigger action by event promoters?

If an athlete was given a tainted supplement, for example, and unknowingly ingested a banned substance that resulted in a failed drug test, does that constitute a serious offense? If a young athlete, without his or her knowledge, is given a banned substance, flunks a drug test, and serves the time for the offense, is that athlete forever ineligible for inclusion in the elite field of a major event? As the sports leaders grapple with these and other questions, answers, new rules and regulations, and guidelines will emerge. For now, however, there is no firm consensus as everyone attempts to deal with the troubling issue of how to address the problem of doping in sport.

Jim Ferstle is a freelance writer who lives in St. Paul. He has covered doping in sports since 1987.