The lab turned out to be a hotbed of performance-enhancing drugs, including human growth hormone and designer steroids that were undetectable by the existing tests. As a result a handful of people—no athletes, but one prominent track coach—went to jail, a few track stars were suspended from their sport, and some superstars, notably Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, had their reputations tarnished. Both deny ever taking performance-enhancing drugs, and no punitive action has been taken against either.
The naifs among us were stunned by the parade of prominent athletes and BALCO customers before a federal grand jury. (A related federal grand jury is reportedly investigating possible perjury and other charges against Bonds.) The cynics like me were saying, “BALCO can hardly be the only lab in America. Where do all the other athletes get their drugs?”
This week we got something of an answer. As first reported by ESPN magazine, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency capped an 18-month investigation dubbed “Raw Deal” with a series of raids across the country on illegal steroids operations. Over 18 months, aided by authorities in nine countries including China, the DEA shut down 56 labs in 27 states, arrested more than 120 people and seized more 11 million doses of steroids, as well as 500 pounds of raw steroid powder, the equivalent of more than 11 million doses of steroids. While no professional athletes have yet been implicated, a DEA agent told ESPN that a database of clients was still being compiled. And if they are clients, it’s time to start naming names.
The massive operation, coming on top of another investigation of HGH distribution that has been linked to such prominent athletes as the New England Patriots’ star safety Rodney Harrison and baseball sluggers Rick Ankiel and Troy Glaus—and the stripping of Floyd Landis’s Tour de France championship—is another reminder that the problem of performance-enhancing drugs is not isolated but rather epidemic. And though Chinese cooperation was cited, China has also been identified as a major source of steroid powder as well as the number one supplier of HGH to what is reportedly a $600 million black-market industry. And it’s hard to imagine that factories are operating on that scale in China without somebody, likely many bodies, turning a blind eye.
That might be less embarrassing to the Chinese if they weren’t welcoming the world to Beijing this summer for the Olympics. But with the exposure of these Chinese drug operations coming on top of major food and drug scandals, massive recalls of Chinese-made toys and other products, and the usual array of human rights charges, China’s coming-out party may not be suitable for world consumption.
Still, while China is certainly culpable of many sins in this matter, it is the United States that is complicit, a massive market for the competitive advantage—or even just the pop-up pecs and abs—that performance-enhancing drugs can provide. And pro sports have been responsible for the continued expansion of that market, making performance-enhancing drugs almost a requirement for some to compete at the highest level.
It is long past time for our pro sports leagues and their unions to stop hiding behind phony excuses, diversionary bluster and privacy concerns. It is galling to listen to leagues like the NFL talk about the money they have invested in trying to develop a urine test for HGH because the league believes a blood test—of people playing America’s bloodiest, most violent sport—is too intrusive for the players. It’s galling when a man of the stature and integrity of Gary Player calls out the PGA Tour, saying he has direct knowledge of steroid use, and golf winds up pointing the finger at him as if it is his responsibility rather than the sport’s to clean up its problem. And baseball has been appalling as, at least in the fans’ eyes, it has become the centerpiece of the problem.
Pushing testing to the limits is the first requisite. The second is making the punishments severe enough that the risk/reward ratio is daunting. When Athens 100-meter Olympic champ Justin Gatlin tested positive for testosterone last year, his second doping offense, the 24-year-old sprinter was banned from competition for eight years. While that may be reduced at some point on appeal, it is essentially a career ender. I can’t tell you track and field has licked all its problems, but if you take a look at some of the winning throws in weight events in recent world competitions, they are nowhere near the marks of the drug-rampant ’80s. There is bite in the punishments now.
Baseball has at least moved in the right direction by boosting its suspension for a first offense to 50 games. Still, why doesn’t a second offense, given how ineffectual and noncomprehensive the testing is in the first place, carry a lifetime ban? Why four games for a first offense in the NFL and a season for the second? Four games is the equivalent of a mild hamstring problem. If using HGH hastened Rodney Harrison’s return from multiple injuries, then a four-game suspension is actually a good deal for him, given that the alternative might have been not recovering quickly enough to return to action.
It has been a long journey in the battle against sports doping: from denial to obfuscation to tokenism, and, finally, to where there are minimally acceptable programs that, while still inadequate, can be defended with a straight face. But it is past time to make the next and biggest leap: to a two-pronged approach that avails itself of the cutting edge of testing technology while punishing the cheats harshly. We Americans excel at pointing the fingers at other countries. But it is America that is at the heart of the problem.
