The straight dope on doping

When Boston and Chicago champ Rita Jeptoo’s “A” sample tested positive for EPO the hue and cry could be heard far and wide.

“This is the beginning of the end,” these Chicken Littles cried. “Our sport will crumble.” And you also heard calls for the head of this Kenyan woman, whose name must no longer be spoken, but instead spat, as she has “wronged us all” in taking whatever it is that she may or may not have taken.

Let me be clear: doping is against the rules and anyone who does it should have his or her performances removed from the record for the time that it was found he or she was doping. But the two claims above, first that this is the prelude to the ruin of our sport, and second that Rita Jeptoo is somehow a bad person, are just wrong.

The cynical truth is that anyone who is involved in high level sport knows that doping is rampant. No one should be shocked or surprised that top marathoners are testing positive now that facilities are being set up in East Africa. This is not an “everyone is doing it” defence of doping. It is merely an acknowledgement of reality. Jeptoo’s bust is no canary in the coal mine. Thirty-six Kenyans have failed tests in the last two years. That doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t really change the landscape of the sport.

The characterization of those taking EPO as lazy or looking for a short cut is short sighted. A runner still has to work very hard and be genetically gifted in order to get to the level where EPO makes a difference. Further, African runners have a different concept of sport than North American or European runners do. We view doping as wrong because our concept of sport is that it is a pastime in which we strive to bring out the best in ourselves. Running in Africa is not so much a sport but a lifeline, a way to feed a family, or even a community, for life. As Swedish athlete Kjell-Eric Stahl told the great running commentator Toni Reavis, “there are athletes in some parts of the world where the cost-benefit analysis of doing performance enhancing drugs falls favourably on the side of doing them.”

Jeptoo has already been labelled a cheater, and accurately so. But what she has already gained in her career far outweighs any moral outrage we in the West can possibly muster. Her positive test will likely not deter any of her cohort from illegally enhancing their performances.

I am no less motivated to run a PB because Jeptoo’s times are jacked. Our ability to market distance running is hampered not because of doped athletes, but because our sport is inherently inward focused. We don’t do a good enough job of promoting the foreign stars in our sport; whether they are doped or not won’t change that.