Real life is complicated.

Sports are supposed to be straightforward.

In sports, we create for ourselves small, self-contained worlds. Each sport is an idealized, simplified version of life. We have clearly defined players, rules, goals, and results. Every match is short and small enough to get your mind around and make sense of.

Children love games. They understand them instinctively and are comfortable within those smaller worlds. Events progress in an orderly way to a clear result. Everything is transparent and understandable.

Contrast this to the complexities of real life. There is no rule book for office politics or parenting. What is fair in love and war? What is the end goal, anyway? Is God or the IRS keeping score? Can I insert another quarter to play again? What different rules apply if I’m born poor or a minority?

The point of sports is to create a fair start, with equal opportunities for anyone who chooses to play. Sports are intentionally an escape from the unclear conflicts of real life, and adults spend billions to escape by watching and joining in these idealized worlds.

Drug testing in sports has brought the complexity of real life onto the playing fields of Olympic and professional sports. The problem is that in regulating drugs, we have acknowledged that the human body is a piece of equipment, and we have decided that altering that equipment in ways outside of the sport is unfair. Of course, the human body just happens to be the most complex piece of equipment on the field of play, and that makes the rules and their enforcement not so simple.

The complexity is particularly troubling for sports because it cuts across the notion of fairness from transparency in sports. The drug testing rules are too complex and too arbitrary in their application. Who knows what is going on? Just as with match-fixing for profit, once athletes and spectators realize transparency is lost, then the spell is broken. We know only that we don’t know everything and there is no order. Sports are no longer separate from the rest of life and no longer special for being so. Sports are no longer real in the way they have to be. They no longer exist as sports, but as shows.

I watched the USADA v. Floyd Landis hearings online.

What was most telling to me was how differently top athletes think and act in comparison to lawyers and scientists. Scientists pursue truths. Their thought processes and methodologies revolve around and revere nothing but the pursuit of a more accurate understanding of the world. They are incredibly honest in this, with themselves and each other, in their actions and their statements.

Attorneys will also say that the legal process pursues truth, but that they aren’t allowed to care how accurate their individual positions or statements are, only how accurate they appear. It seemed to me they instinctively seek to contain evidence for as long as possible in order to have maximum flexibility to present their own version of situations, hopefully in ways that will be just a little more persuasive than the other lawyers’. (To see lawyers in this case use a tone of indignation when accusing Floyd of a win-at-all-costs attitude was humorous.)

USADA and Floyd had top attorneys who seemed pretty good at containing evidence. (I predict that the testimony of most witnesses will not be found in training tapes for classes on IRMS.) It wasn’t until the seventh day of the trial that the personality and overwhelming knowledge of an expert witness was uncontainable. That was May 21, when Richard Young cross-examination of Dr. Meier-Augenstein. That interaction was, in my opinion, a situation where the weight of a man full of facts and understanding simply crushed an attorney’s attitude, semantics, and cherry-picked points.

By minute 60 of the session, I was surprised that Mr. Young kept opening up more of his own positions to the Dr.’s corrections, and then allowing him to be so thorough in his explanations. My guess is that Mr. Young knew the Doctor had done serious damage to USADA’s case, and was trying to undo it by catching him in a slip-up that might serve to taint what so far looked like rock solid scientific understanding and explanations. As the questioning continued through minutes 65, 75, 85, I felt like I was watching a great break away in a long cycling race…

At minute 97, Mr. Young gave up the chase, and I had been convinced that USADA’s case should not have been brought against Floyd. Who knows if he used testosterone, but the testing relied upon by USADA in this case sure can’t help anyone now.

I can’t blame the attorneys from HRO for the situation. They have been hired by WADA, USOC and some dozen of the USOC Olympic sports governing bodies to go after athletes in different situations. It is their job to do so.

I believe the USADA v. Floyd Landis case has hurt sports and the anti-doping movement. The case cannot give confidence to the public that USADA is competent to make sports clean. Further, that case certainly can’t encourage athletes to think that if they use performance enhancing drugs then they will be caught, OR if the don’t use drugs, then they won’t be unfairly accused. That’s a very bad situation for everyone.

Also, USADA is wasting so much money pursuing Floyd. The case is grounded on a bad test run under circumstances that are questionable. Good reliable tests for many substances and methods are available and could be used more regularly. Additional good tests can be developed through research. This just takes money to buy and use good science. Good tests go unchallenged, are applied fairly, and build trust in the rules. How many scientifically straight-forward tests can a couple million dollars fund? If USADA loses, do they have to pay all of Floyd’s attorneys’ fees?

The rules of sports have to be simple and fair. That is the point and attraction of sports. Drug use and drug testing threatens this, in professional events and the Olympics. If USADA would just rely on the scientists and the scientific approach to fact-finding, this would keep drug-testing simple and competitions as fair as possible.

The challenge, as I see it, is to contain the bureaucrats and their lawyers within the bounds of good science. If Floyd wins his case, this may be the best way to help make this happen.

In 2003, Greg and some other rowers experimented with simulated altitude using their “R2D2” machine to try and alter their own equipment. (R2D2 is USADA-legal). He and Steve pulled 1:41.2 and 1:40.9 hr. of power tests on the ergometer at 161 and 153 lbs., respectively.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 1:54 pm and is filed under gregruckman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.