Steroids: The past is still relevant, By: Gwen Knapp
April 16, 2006, San Francisco Chronicle
The pages are filled with dry, turgid legalese, and they sit largely ignored in a Colorado courthouse. They aren't as sensational as Jose Canseco's autobiography, which details both steroid abuse in Major League Baseball and an evening with Madonna. They aren't as racy as "Game of Shadows," the best-seller that two Chronicle reporters produced on the BALCO scandal.
The story enveloped in the court papers is complicated and murky, and even though it centers on the use of performance-enhancing drugs, there is no mention of Barry Bonds or any other famous baseball player. The court documents spell out an intriguing mystery, worth pondering by anyone who recognizes that the steroid issue goes far, far beyond Bonds and our national obsession with preserving the sanctity of baseball's record book.
The story begins with a federal lawsuit filed against the U.S. Olympic Committee by its chief of drug testing from 1991 to 2000, Wade Exum. His case accuses the USOC of fraud, saying that Exum, a medical doctor, took the Olympic job to prevent doping but his bosses impeded his efforts.
When a previous version of the lawsuit was dismissed in 2003, Exum disclosed documents to Sports Illustrated and the Orange County Register, which reported that 18 American Olympians between 1984 and 2000 had tested positive and avoided sanctions. The most prominent was Carl Lewis, who tested positive for small amounts of three stimulants before the 1988 Olympics. His six-month suspension was overturned on the grounds of "inadvertent use," an excuse no longer accepted.
Now, Exum's attorney has subpoenaed a former assistant of Exum's, Joan Price, saying that she has a copy of a doping log kept by the USOC from 1984 to 2000 and that the log may provide additional evidence of athletes who tested positive and then were secretly exonerated.
"We do not believe that any such document exists," USOC chief communications officer Darryl Seibel said last week. He pointed out that in 2003 an independent law firm had investigated suspicions that the organization had buried positive drug tests. The search yielded a voluminous report that was forwarded to the IOC, which determined that there have been no cover-ups.
But on April 5, the USOC's lawyers added a curious chapter to the case file. They countered the subpoena with a motion for a protective order, which would block the introduction of new evidence from Price or, failing that, require confidentiality for any document that might surface.
Why would the USOC lawyers try to protect a document that their client insists doesn't exist? The attorneys didn't reply to requests for an interview last week. From the USOC communications office, Seibel said: "We filed the request because we believe this matter has gone on for too long."
Obviously, whenever one party is trying to wring money out of another, every claim should trigger a high degree of skepticism. Even if the subpoena from Exum's side did produce evidence of hidden positive tests, that information would have to be authenticated before it could be made public.
For some reason, though, the USOC's motion for a protective order doesn't argue that a bogus doping log might surface. Instead, it emphasizes the potential embarrassment to athletes who might be named. Exhibit A, attached to the request for protection, is a collection of newspaper and magazine stories about the documents that Exum released in 2003.
So now let's sum up the USOC's position: There are no more test results. But if there are, we don't want them made public.
Out of curiosity, I called a few people on Capitol Hill with expertise in the steroid issue and asked if they had any interest in the subpoena and the motion to quash it. The general response was: One, we shouldn't get caught up in a lawsuit -- a sensible point. And, two, since the biggest problems of drug testing in American Olympic sports have been remedied by the creation of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in 2000, why look backward?
That's not so sensible. It sounds too much like Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past."
The reason many athletes turn to doping is that they believe the practice has been tolerated in the past. According to "Game of Shadows," Bonds' anger about McGwire's fame in 1998 went beyond petty jealousy. He seethed because he believed that McGwire was a cheater breaking a hallowed record with impunity.
If legislators want to steer young people away from doping, they have to recognize that teenage athletes can be very savvy, and many of them have a strong sense of which stars cheat. Every time one of those stars is exposed as a fraud, the appeal of steroid use for the next generation sours just a little bit, because few things unnerve a kid like the prospect of public humiliation.
The USOC's objections to the maneuvering in the Exum case may be completely legitimate, but the reasoning set down in the court papers isn't. By itself, the sanctity of an athlete's image doesn't justify suppressing possible information that the image is a sham.
