Vohra’s view: Battle against doping getting out of hand

Bikram Vohra 14:05 25/06/2015
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  • High time: Mo Farah should sever ties with Salazar.

    There was a time not so long ago when one thought the only coaches that got derailed were the ones on the railroad. 

    But after the Alberto Salazar scandal and the pressure it has put on Mo Farah, one has to ask if modern-day coaches have allowed their ambitions to manipulate their charges with (or without) their knowledge?

    We have always had that sneaky suspicion that this tribe, like the Williams sisters’ dad, project their hopes onto their wards and have a burning desire to sun themselves in the reflected glory.

    Anything goes and often enough, the line between honesty and deceit is fudged. But surely with the gradual movement towards coaches themselves being former stars rather than just good tutors, the thwarted thrust for glory should not count for much.

    Clearly, this is not so and cheatin’ coaches (nice title for a hit parade song) may not be a rare one off. The scary part is that the rot, as they say, may be a lot deeper.  

    And the accusations against Salazar stretch to include Galen Rupp, Mo’s partner and runner up at the London Olympics in the 10,000 metres, claiming he was fed testosterone since he was sixteen and in high school while also leaving unsaid what ‘diet’ Mo was on. 

    And most of us have probably forgotten that the Games, while hailed as a brilliantly organised event, were later muddied by narcotics dealer Victor Conte currently enjoying the hospitality of the US Corrections system for ‘feeding’ track and field stars like Dwain Chambers and Marion Jones.

    Conte said as high as 60 percent of the athletes who took part on London were on some sort of a high. The fact that he was a convicted felon raised doubts about his allegations and the cap was tightly screwed on this revelation. 

    But three factors still have to be addressed. Are coaches and their senior cousins, the managers, in collusion with the players? After all, so many of them cannot be so naive that they don’t understand what is happening when they see a sudden spurt in muscle mass and performance.

    On this note, over to Mo Farah. Innocent or guilty I don’t know but the charges are so powerful that one has to accept the call made by British endurance runner

    Andy Vernon that both he and Rupp should sever ties with Salazar to indicate at least partly that they were duped. 

    The second point is about the access to chemicals and mixes and the confusion between ‘health’ products and banned substances. The vast range of steroids available make it almost impossible to track, especially with the present amateurs’ affection for ‘enhancement products’.

    And the third and most worrying aspect is that many athletes’ career get tainted because even over-the-counter administrations could contain traces of banned chemicals. That is unfair. 

    Ask your pharmacist to show you the lengthy prohibited list. If you are travelling abroad be careful, even eye drops and lotions could land you in trouble.

    Suppositories and vapour inhalation are non-starters. Alternative schools of medicine like homeopathy and ayurveda are fraught with high risk.

    What does an athlete do if he falls sick? He reads the banned substance list and prays he hasn’t gone wrong. 

    Here is the wording of an official warning: “Some brand names offer multiple variations of the same product and with the formula being different for each, there is a real risk that one of them will contain a prohibited substance while another may not.”

    It is intimidating beyond normal comprehension. You begin to research the issue of sport and substance and you begin to feel sorry for this lot. They will err, they hardly have a choice. They are not pharmacologists, they are sportspersons.

    A little sanity has to be brought into this equation. This January we had a case of the biter bit. Athletes agent Federico Rosa of Italy and coach Claudio Berardille dumped Kenyan marathon runner Rita Jeptoo, who had been reprimanded for failing a dope test.

    Maybe she had a flipping cold. Not anything to sneeze at.

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