Greatest sports stars’ achievements under dark cloud of suspicion
This week I interviewed Ireland’s most successful cyclist Stephen Roche about his new autobiography (an interview that was broadcast just hours before the revelations of the doping charges against seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong). It is 25 years since Roche’s remarkable achievement of winning the Tour, the Giro d’Italia, and the World Championship, the so-called triple crown. Only one man, the legendary Eddy Mercyx, had done it previously and nobody has done it since, so difficult is the task to achieve.
We spoke about that and many other things in his book: The break-up of his marriage as he struggled to cope with retirement from the sport and the cancer that hit his seven-year-old son five years ago (from which, thankfully, he is in remission). But, inevitably, and not just because the book deals with it, our interview turned to the issue of drug cheating in the sport and his own experience of dealing with allegations that he engaged in doping (which, it must be stated, he denies).
The latter stages of Roche’s career were dogged by injury, which meant he found it very hard to hit the heights of 1987. Keeping going got tougher and tougher, let alone being competitive. It was not until many years later that allegations surfaced that one of Roche’s teams had been implicated in an EPO scandal, EPO being a form of blood doping that replaces blood cells with energy enhancing ones, aiding the ability to take in oxygen.
Among the reporters who got stuck into the story of an Italian blood doping “laboratory“, and who linked Roche, among other cyclists, to it, were two of his best friends, David Walsh and Paul Kimmage (the latter a childhood friend who cycled professionally with him and who later became a brilliant sports writer, which he is still).
Roche ended up having a heated debate with Walsh on The Late Late Show in 2004, to which he refers in his book. His argument to me on air was that was impossible for him to prove that he never took drugs. In the book he said that the evidence that was offered against him was very far from conclusive and indeed circumstantial and misinterpreted.
In the book he also thanks both Walsh and Kimmage for their help to him over the years. However, he admitted to me that a row ensued when he confronted Kimmage over the allegations and that the pair have not spoken since. He was clearly uncomfortable when I put it to him that, as a friend, Kimmage was not going to make allegations against him without being convinced of their veracity. Roche conceded that there were many problems in the sport, but argued that both Walsh and Kimmage should balance that with all of the good that is in it, and remember too what they got from competing or writing about it.
The upshot of it all is that nobody will ever be able to take Roche’s achievements away from him — and the record books will always record his triple crown — but neither will he ever be able to escape the doubts that some harbour about him: If they fear he was cheating later in his career was he doing it earlier too, even if there is no evidence to suggest that?
I asked Roche too what he made of comments last weekend by Senator Eamon Coghlan, a great Olympian who finished fourth in two Olympic finals in 1976 and 1980, who described Michelle Smith de Bruin as Ireland’s “greatest Olympian”, because of her three gold medals in 1996.
“There are athletes around the world that are tainted with positive tests and won medals who were never castigated in their home countries like Michelle was,” said Coghlan. “Let’s remember she never — ever — tested positive, particularly during her Olympic year. If you look at the record books, she is down as winning four medals at the Atlanta Olympics, and it is because of that that I have to give her credit as Ireland’s best ever Olympian. There are a lot of people who would agree with me, but there are also a lot of people who would disagree with me.”
Those who disagree are mainly those in the swimming community who found Smith de Bruin’s rise to prominence impossible to believe. She came under the influence of Erik de Bruin, himself suspended from competition as an athlete because of drug use (and later to be her husband) in 1994. Her times improved dramatically in short order, bringing her from not just rank outsider, but unranked in the 400m individual medley, to being best in the world in just two years. Improved training methods, without the use of performance enhancing drugs, have rarely had such an impact.
It is true that no charge for the use of a banned substance has ever been brought against her. The charge against her was one of contamination: She had adulterated her urine sample with whiskey when confronted in her Kilkenny home with a surprise visit from drug testers. The lawyers acting for FINA, the international federation, went for that charge in the belief that it could be proven easily and without risk of failure because of a technicality.
Bizarrely, it was de Bruin’s lawyer who, at the Court of Arbitration appeal in Lausanne, Switzerland, against his client’s suspension, who raised the issue of a banned substance, androtestosterone, and revealed the parties had “agreed” not to mention its presence in the spoiled sample.
DE BRUIN has never really recovered from that. It was all the evidence needed by those who had refused to engage in the national celebration of the summer she won her medals, when the doubters had to run the gauntlet to make their legitimate and factually found points that her improvement was incredible. She was never stripped of her medals, but there is an element of embarrassment about it all. She was not among those asked by the Olympic Council of Ireland to serve as one of the 41 torch-bearers for the 2012 Olympic flame as it made its way through Dublin last week. It was a pointed omission.
Roche too came to the defence of de Bruin during our interview. It is a problem when other great athletes downplay pretty conclusive evidence of cheating.
And how now will people in sport react to the news that Lance Armstrong is facing the most serious of charges after a lengthy investigation by the US anti-doping agency? The charge sheet is extraordinary and pointed, accusing Armstrong of a range of doping offences over a very lengthy period. Armstrong has pointed out that he passed over 500 drug tests during his career, which is true. It is also true that some sports have become a battleground for chemists and doctors in recent years, as the cheats use new technology and medical advances to stay one step ahead of the testers and one step ahead of those athletes who are not prepared to cheat.
Armstrong, whose achievements appear to have defied logic, given his near death from cancer, is likely to provide the defining case. He labours under the darkest shadow of all.
* The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.
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