Jamaicas media PR begining to push back

[Sir X]

OBSTACLE COURSE

Published: Sunday | August 4, 2013



Veronica Campbell-Brown



Asafa Powell



Sherone Simpson

Complicated drug culture puts athletes on edge

Gordon Williams, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Point them to the track or field and expect Jamaican athletes to excel by applying a complex formula of physical talent, guts and smarts. Leave them to figure out what they're barred from ingesting, and many false start.
But it may not be for lack of trying.

The recent rash of positive tests for banned substances impacting Jamaica's track and field is proving that heightened awareness by athletes does not guarantee clean results from the lab. Neither do extensive - even excessive - efforts to monitor what goes into their bodies.

While most athletes, cheaters among them, usually blame innocent slip-ups, breaches of trust or sabotage when confronted by damning test results, it's becoming increasingly clear that not many can stay lockstep with the diligence demanded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which monitors sports for violations. WADA's lists of banned substances are looming squarely into the spotlight, alongside the growing band of elite athletes - rightfully or not - who are doomed to scrutiny, scorn and financial losses.

DIFFICULT TO COMPLY

While the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) holds athletes solely responsible for what they ingest, some experts believe the lists of banned substances are getting harder to decipher than the DNA of a Martian.

"Athletes without scientific support can feel like they are in a loaded minefield where even the best due diligence can come up short," Dr Peter Ruddock, a medicinal chemist and expert witness for several elite Jamaican athletes who've tested positive for banned substances, wrote in a recent article for The Gleaner.

Checks with several camps, including athletes, agents, managers and coaches, revealed that far more care is being taken to monitor what goes into an athlete's body than ever before, compared to the past when dope testing was less prevalent and sophisticated.

ELITE ONES

That, some argue, strains the credibility of athletes claiming they inadvertently ingested banned substances. The elite ones, especially, expect drug tests - in and out of competition. They should know what substances will trigger adverse analytical findings.

But do they? Despite deafening calls for harsher punishment for doping offenders - former greats Sergei Bubka and Sebastian Coe among those demanding longer bans - not many current athletes publicly cheer when even their most hated rivals are found guilty of using banned substances, often stimulants found in supplements. They know cases may not be what they appear on the surface.

"It's not everything in a bottle is listed on a bottle," explained Marlon Malcolm, a Jamaican coach based in the United States. "An athlete doesn't really know what they are taking. Anything can happen."

Malcolm coaches sprinter Sheri-Ann Brooks, who tested positive for a banned stimulant at the 2009 Jamaica trials. She made the team to the IAAF World Championships in Athletics (WCA), but was not allowed to compete, even after she was cleared. Although Malcolm accepted that the supplement Brooks took at the time contained what WADA linked to a banned stimulant, he argued that the substance was not listed on the supplement's container or by WADA.

"We really went through all the supplements thoroughly," Malcolm said. "The ingredients listed on the supplement were OK."

The Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) conducted 70 drugs tests at this year's national trials alone. Yet some athletes, even those competing at the highest level for years, may not know exactly what the testers are looking for. WADA, apparently, has two lists of banned substances: the Prohibited List International Standard and another Summary of Major Modifications and Explanatory Notes. Add substances listed as banned to the myriad of those "related" to them, and it can get confusing. Not all athletes can pay to get substances analysed.

Yet, not everyone is willing to dump blame on all athletes, even with cheaters lurking among them.

"I think they are more vigilant now," said long-time Jamaican track and field observer Teddy Bailey. "But the athletes are not scientists ... . It's hard to keep track of what's banned or what's not banned ... . I really empathise with the athletes."

SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT

Help is one solution.
"Our athletes need scientific support," wrote Ruddock, "replete with the appropriate education and training to navigate this obstacle course."

Some negotiate the course on their own. Stunning recent revelations that Jamaican stars like Veronica Campbell-Brown, Asafa Powell, and Sherone Simpson returned positive tests for banned substances have pulled back the curtain on steps taken by athletes to increase their awareness about doping.

Many, including cheaters, do their own research and complement findings with checks done by knowledgeable supporters. But that hasn't stopped positive drugs tests, which have also claimed big names outside Jamaica, including American star Tyson Gay. Swamped at times by ignorance, some athletes fall back on proven routines.

"For me, there is nothing added," explained Lennox Graham, a former national track representative who coaches at Johnson C. Smith University in the United States, and will assist Jamaica at the IAAF WCA August 10-18 in Russia.

"Same thing I have been telling my athletes then, I am telling them now."
That includes regular "warnings" about what to ingest and who to trust.
"Don't get fancy or get high tech," Graham tells his camp, which includes sisters Shermaine and Danielle Williams, plus Leford Green, who will represent Jamaica at the WCA. " ... You have to keep it simple ... . The coach and the athletes have to communicate."

Stephen Francis, who coaches Powell and Simpson, hinted that a possible breakdown in communication may have led to the sprinters testing positive for the banned stimulant oxilofrine. Francis told a local radio station that the two made decisions about supplements use without consulting him. He said he researches products for athletes to determine if they are free from banned substances. Campbell-Brown, Powell, Simpson, and other Jamaicans have declared they never deliberately took any banned substance. Their fate will be decided by JADCO.

HEIGHTENED CAUTION

Others, spooked by mistrust or burned by previous experiences, have hiked caution levels. Brooks, who is on Jamaica's 2013 WCA team, "cut off all supplements" since her positive test in 2009, said Malcolm. "Her diet has changed extremely."

She now relies on coconut water, directly from the fruit, as her recovery drink after it was determined the banned stimulant originated from her supplement.

Dr Herb Elliott, chairman of JADCO, has warned athletes to avoid supplements. Usain Bolt, Jamaica's super sprinter, confirmed he relies on a support team for guidance, especially with the myriad interpretations surrounding WADA's lists. Bolt insisted he takes vitamins, not supplements, but he also admitted he personally tracks the rules.

"You have to be very careful as an athlete because there are a lot of things on the banned list," he told a press conference recently. "You have to keep up to date all the time."

Relying on others is not fail-safe either.

"I basically put my trust in someone and I was let down," Gay told the Associated Press after his adverse analytical findings were discovered.

Caution has led athletes to quirky habits. One coach videotapes the preparation of his athletes' meals, to keep as evidence.

"Just to make sure," he said. "Just in case."

Athletes weren't always that skeptical. Point them to the track or field and they're OK. Everything else is becoming too complicated.

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[Sir X]

Jamaica's athletes reputation has hit rock bottom

Published: Sunday | August 4, 2013



POWELL



Simpson



Campbell-Brown

Michael A. Grant, Guest Columnist

WITH THE recent news that one of the senior Reggae Boyz has returned an adverse analytical finding, Jamaica's reputation for noble, hard-working athletes, fuelled only by reggae rhythm and yellow yam, has hit rock bottom. We now stand squarely in the age of the Jamaican drug scandal, waiting for each new revelation to tarnish and redefine the new golden age of the island's athletics.

At every turn, the drug-detection czars congratulate themselves about how fine their new techniques and tools are, and ask onlookers to behold the big fish they're now reeling in. Journalists, including Jamaican ones, seem thrilled to follow along uncritically, as if they had always secretly suspected that little Jamaica could never legally have become so dominant in athletics. The sports fan, who has been lied to so often in so many other areas of life, has no choice but to join in the condemnation, saddened and angry that one more thing can't be trusted. "If you choose to cheat," says Sebastian Coe, "the technology is there to make sure that our sport is clean and is competed all with integrity." There is something missing from this picture, especially if Coe believes that the recent high-profile cases 'chose to cheat'.

NO ACCIDENT

We didn't get here by accident. Much of the current situation owes its origin to the ancient ideals of athletics, which sought to keep money and unfair physical advantages out of the sport, while trusting each nation to police its own athletes. Then, amateurs became pros; the early mushroom and strychnine abusers evolved into users of all kinds of chemical boosters, and worst of all, East Germany refused to allow scrutiny of its performance-enhancing drug (PED) activities in the 1960s. Before long, the detection of drug cheats in sport had become a joke, giving rise to shady Eastern Europeans programmes of the 1970s. The United States authorities, desperate to keep up in the athletic arms race, have allegedly overlooked several infractions by marquee athletes since that time.

Enter World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999 at the dawn of the new millennium, determined to regain lost prestige and muscle. Money and technology poured into the testing body from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and world governments. Where the old detection was being done in thousandths, substances could routinely be divined in millionths.

Local authorities, anxious to overcompensate in societies where fairness is rare, now can't wait to throw the book at 'infractions' in which athletes have used no more than what they thought was a harmless 'sex pill', cough medicine, joint cream, muscle balm, toothache remedy or asthma medication.

We should never forget that athletes have regular maladies just like we do, and aren't actually trying to improve athletic performance with everything they ingest. Some commentators have even gone so far as to suggest that professionals like Veronica Campbell-Brown, Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, who are all at or near 30, will do anything to retain or regain top spots in the sport. Their careers will all soon be over, the theory goes, so they must be risking it all and operating at the brink of detection.

EDUCATE ATHLETES

After they conquered the 'cream' (mostly testosterone) and 'the clear' (tetrahydrogestrinone), the substances that will forever define the most notorious era in track and field , I expected that WADA would use all that technology and organizational capability to educate and help athletes stay clean and engaged in the sport - not throw them out of it.

Dr Louise Burke, from the Department of Sports Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport, has said emphatically that because of the poor standards governing nutritional supplements, "it is impossible to identify supplements and sports foods that are risk-free". She goes on to say that since athletes are responsible for their intake, then major changes in education of athletes and everyone who handles them is required. Why, then, is WADA so pleased with itself, like some kind of croupier at a rigged casino game, before such change has been achieved? Are we supposed to become so ashamed for our athletes that 'vitamin gotcha' is the only sport left to cheer?

Essentially, the whole business seems to be led by technology, not justice. In law, you have to connect alleged actions logically in order to get at the truth. But in doping detection, there's a huge difference between sports justice and regular justice, which recognises only one crime, accepts very few extenuating circumstances, yet doles out a variety of punishments, many career-ending. In other words, since the suspect usually stops competing or is suspended - effectively losing most of a season's revenues and rankings regardless of the outcome - everyone with a positive finding is effectively punished. Most world courts would call this arbitrary and capricious, kind of like hanging someone for theft of something that only cost a penny, then using the same rope to dispatch a mass murderer. But don't laugh yet; Charles Dickens described a British legal system in the 1800s that saw no problem in executing an adolescent for swiping a gentleman's handkerchief. It took a more evolved review and revision of objective justice in the law to change those standards.

HELP THEM STAY CLEAN

This evolution needs to happen now before it's too late (for those unclear about when that is, it's just after Usain Bolt uses the wrong eye drops). Every sports fan, including this writer, has had his or her own moment of thinking, "can that athlete be legally this fast or strong?" but it is time to insist that the system of finding and removing dopers in sport be fair and seem to be fair - you know, the way regular justice strives to be. A sport that represents perhaps the highest standard of human physical achievement cannot be policed exclusively by supercomputers, MDs and PhDs who don't care if athletes are clueless about what they're taking; everyone involved with athletes must help them stay clean. Additionally, the dope-catchers must expand their current database of legal substances or allow an international athletes' union to do so, and get every new entry officially blessed before anyone uses them.

HUMBLE PERSONS

From all indications, the three Jamaican Olympians appear to be the most humble, traditionally raised, honourable people who have ever worn the national colours. Is it not possible that athletes at that 'advanced age' are actually so successful that they want to maintain peak health - and can afford to do it by spending and searching more aggressively?

Marion Jones never failed a drug test, and so she blithely denied that she got her regular 'fix' from BALCO via commercial courier, complete with dosage calendar and instructions. Ben Johnson, with jaundiced eyes and raging acne, admitted to taking injections of stanozolol as he radically transformed his physique and 100-metre performances. That's the kind of thing we should call doping, when you gamble big and actively seek a chemical edge. You still have to work hard, of course, but your capacity to build muscle, train more vigorously and recover more quickly is the payoff. The great sporting bodies should not let nutritional supplements trip up their best athletes, sidelining them, stigmatising them and shaming them without at least some determination of their intent. On this score, Lord Coe, head of the Organising Committee for the London 2012 Olympics, has it wrong. Saying that athletes are responsible for their intake might sound great, but it places the burden of proof on the accused, which really should have gone away entirely after the Middle Ages. The system, even though it has well-known investigative techniques available, chooses lazy medieval reasoning instead of modern law.

The net effect of unjust justice is that the names of Blake, Fraser-Pryce and others are being listed in the same breath with those of disgraced athletes like Marion Jones and Ben Johnson because they all have had a bad test in common, but without the context. The problem is that the writers rattling off the names do not tend to mention exoneration or accidental ingestion. An adverse finding leaves you guilty forever, no matter the circumstances. It isn't fair. At least the poor little Dickensian pickpockets knew they were doing something wrong.

Michael A. Grant is author of several books, including (with Hubert Lawrence and Bryan Cummings) 'The Power & The Glory: Jamaica in World Athletics, from WWII to the Diamond League Era'. Send comments to columns@gleanerjm.com

[Sir X]

NOT THE TIME TO RUSH TO JUDGEMENT

The way the world has been reacting to Asafa Powell’s adverse finding this week, one would think the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had finally cracked the case of a serial killer who had been on the prowl for years. His case was one among five Jamaicans who returned adverse findings from tests conducted at the national championships in June but the world hardly cares about the others, not even Sherone Simpson, the Olympic 100-metre silver medalist from 2008.
The international media and local media have been feeding like piranha on every morsel of new information that emerges; some have seemingly even manufactured their own information in this media frenzy that has been at full tilt since Sunday, July 14. The doubters have also come out, people like the head of British Athletics Niels de Vos, who has called for four-year bans for both Powell and Gay. This, when much of the information about the cases are still to be known. This guy is a throwback to the day when they used to burn people at the stake just because someone said they were witches.
Look, in this world of professional sports and performance enhancing drugs, not every one who fails a drug test is a cheat. If you believe that you will also believe that every murder suspect is guilty of murder. That is why there are so many degrees of murder – first degree, second degree, manslaughter etc. And just like in those cases there are varying degrees of guilt when it comes to doping cases.
Here is what we know. Asafa Powell’s agent Paul Doyle hired a physical trainer on a temporary basis for a period of one month in May to keep the former world record holder healthy. The whole world knows that Powell has been having groin and hamstring injuries for the past few years and had hardly been able to finish a race since he strolled across the finish line in the finals of the 100 metre finals at the London Olympics last year.
The trainer Chris Xuereb is a Canadian who claims to have expertise as a fitness and strength trainer as well as skills as a nutritionist. Xuereb joins the MVP camp in Jamaica, preparing Powell for the national championships where he finishes seventh in the 100m finals and does not make the team as an individual representative for the World Championships in Moscow but could be considered for a relay spot considering the uncertainty surrounding defending world champion Yohan Blake’s participation at the upcoming championships.
Xuereb travels to Italy with Powell and is administering to the athlete providing him and subsequently Sherone Simpson with ‘new’ supplements that he claims were cleared when he had them checked out on GlobalDr.org, a site that lists supplements and whether they are safe for consumption by athletes. Simpson also checks the site and finds nothing to suggest that the supplements are unsafe.
On July 14, Powell and Simpson and three other Jamaicans are informed that they returned adverse findings. Powell and Simpson release statements naming the drug Methysynephrine as the stimulant that was found in their urine samples. Later that same day, news broke that Italian police raided the hotel where Powell, Simpson and Xuereb are staying and seize supplements and medication that were tested for the presence of banned substances.
On Monday, July 15, Paul Doyle, the agent who represents Powell and Simpson reveals that it was the two athletes who alerted the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA about the possibility that the supplements supplied by Xuereb could have resulted in the positive tests. WADA then alerted the Italian police who raided the trainer’s room.
On the same day Stephen Francis says publicly that he blames the athletes for breaking MVP’s supplement protocol wherein all new supplements have to be cleared by its medical team before being ingested by any athlete who is a member of the club.
Now when I look at that information, I see where Powell and Simpson have been very aggressive in trying to get to the bottom of the situation that resulted in their positive drug tests. Each athlete has been tested approximately 200 times throughout their careers and have never failed a test before now. Simpson I am told cried all night when she was informed of her test results shortly before she was supposed to compete in Madrid Spain on Saturday, July 13. She withdrew from the race and has since been very cooperative with authorities.
People will argue that their actions are only being taken now because they have been caught and they want to try to lessen any possible sanctions against them that might come after a disciplinary panel hears the case against them. But based on the comments from Francis, who says he will back his athletes’ integrity and the information coming from Doyle, who has taken responsibility for hiring someone he clearly didn’t know enough about, and the actions of the athletes in helping the authorities get to the bottom of this drug scandal as the media is calling it, suggests to me that there was no intent to cheat from either of these athletes. I say that too, because I happen to know both personally and believe them to be people of the highest integrity.
Yes, they were negligent and let their guards down and are now facing the potential consequences for their actions but that is the only thing I believe they are guilty of. Still, those actions have cast a darker shadow over the sport that has put food on their tables this past decade. I am sure they are aware that their actions will cost them in more ways than one, but to call them cheats and to treat them like they have always cheated and intended to cheat again is wrong.
Maybe it’s time for track and field athletes to form a union and push back. Yes, there are cheats among track and field athletes but for those who aren’t there needs to be some kind of justice. Leading up to the London 2012 Olympics athletes from across the world came together to force the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to provide with a greater share of the revenue that these athletes generate for the Olympic movement, they should also rally around the idea of it being unfair to lump all athletes into the same boat when it comes to doping offences.
In Major League Baseball, the players’ union looks out for the best interests of their players and does its best to protect it’s athletes from being raked over the coals until the full story is known. Perhaps it’s time track and field do the same

[Gamma]

Thank thee X!

Why our own view us as children of a lesser god and remain so quick to throw us under the bus and bawl out "I knew it" to appease, who again? Themselves or is it to seem objective to the wolf pack?