And so it begins. I'm not sure what's more riveting - the Olympic Games itself
or the procession of drug busts that go with it. On Thursday, a second Chinese
athlete was banned for life for failing a drug test. And wrestler Luo Meng
tested positive for a diuretic five days after backstroker Ouyang Kunpeng was
thrown out of competitive swimming for life for abusing the steroid
clenbuterol.
Chinese media said the positive tests came from 5,236 tests carried out this
year, more than 80% of them unannounced, out-of-competition tests, mostly on
athletes preparing for the Olympics in Beijing in August.
Luo's case seems pretty clear-cut: diuretics have a long and sordid history in
sport doping, commonly used to mask the
ingestion of performance-enhancing drugs by flushing the illicit substances
away in the offender's urine stream. In 2003, Australian cricketer Shane Warne
famously was busted for taking a diuretic and banned from all forms of cricket
for a year. He blamed his mum for slipping him one to make him look slimmer for
a TV appearance. As caring mothers do.
Ouyang's case, however, is more unusual in that he has blamed his test result
on eating some bad pork.
Clenbuterol sounds like something you fill up your cigarette lighter with, or
an acne treatment. Close. It's actually a fast-acting medication prescribed to
sufferers of asthma via a bronchodilator or "puffer" to help them breathe
easier. Veterinarians use it as a breathing aid for horses.
It also has darker applications.
It can be packaged in salt, tablet or liquid form and is routinely (albeit
illegally) fed by Chinese farmers as shouroujing to pigs and other
livestock to promote lean-meat growth so they can be sold for a higher price
and slaughtered earlier.
Not something you want clogging up your arteries. That pork-crackling sandwich
is unhealthy enough.
Hundreds of people each year in Asia and Europe are rushed to hospital with
acute food poisoning after eating clenbuterol-tainted meat products. What's
good for you and Mr Ed in a puffer isn't so good on a plate.
But it's a strange world we live in. There are people out there - unscrupulous
athletes, vain bodybuilders - who have no qualms practically sprinkling it on
their morning cereal. In their morally atrophied minds they have just cause: it
makes them perform better, recover quicker, breathe easier and look more "cut".
The human train wreck Britney Spears is reported to have used the toxic
chemical as a slimming aid.
Ouyang may have been one of those people.
It certainly doesn't stretch credulity to advance the hypothesis that he was
using the drug to get into peak shape for the start of the Olympics in 35 days'
time. What does stretch credulity is his excuse. Yet because it's so novel I'm
staying open-minded about it.
From my limited understanding of the subject (I'm no scientist) most of the
reported cases of food poisoning from clenbuterol have come about after
consumption of pig liver, where the additive concentrates.
I may be wrong, but Ouyang would have had to have unwittingly eaten one
whopping great hunk of contaminated liver - something most swimmers preparing
for an Olympics would regard as vital to their preparation as a chocolate
donut.
It just doesn't stack up. But have the facts of this case been fully examined?
The Chinese government should be commended for taking such a hardline stance on
drugs. The testing procedures in place for this Olympiad are unprecedented in
their scale and scope. If more governments and sporting bodies could muster the
same resolve, even courage, to fight the scourge of drugs in sport the world
would be a better place.
However, there's also the principle of natural justice that should be applied
here. I know it's not a principle one normally associates with the People's
Republic but it's one to which all nations around the world should aspire and
which all people who have a voice should fight for when possible.
If I unwittingly consumed a dodgy pork lunch, got drug tested at work, and was
summarily expelled from my profession for life for testing positive to an
illicit substance I had no idea was contained in what I had just eaten, I would
have good cause to feel hard done by.
Not just hard done by. Shattered. Suicidal.
Let's remember there is a human being involved here who, at worst, made a
serious error of judgment, albeit a conniving and calculated one. At best,
Ouyang is an idiot for eating something an elite athlete shouldn't have.
Let's get to the truth.
Jesse Fink is a leading football writer in Australia. He is the author of
the critically acclaimed book 15 Days in June: How Australia Became a
Football Nation and has won various awards in Australia for his sports writing.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
