Athletes, and, I mean Track and Field Athletes, share rooms at World Championships and the Olympics. Suddenly it is a huge surprise to all that an athlete has been found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs. And no-one knew. Of course they did, but for one of those bizzare reasons no-one shops another athlete.
It is pretty comon knowledge know that a Australian journalist was on the case of Marion Jones in Sydney - only to be scared of by the Powers to be(USA Team). At the same meeting a British athlete was beaten into silver, but was consoled afterwards that he would get Gold in a few hours. That never happened.
Track and Field is surrounded by drug scandals- to the point that no-one believes anything anymore. People win Gold and stop competing immediately, rules are broken re testing, but if it suits the authorities they come out again and after one warm up win a World Gold. Some like Dwain Chambers(GB) admit drug use, but under GB Olympic by rules cannot compete in Olympics, whereas other International athletes can fail and after serving a ban can compete in Olympics.
Dwain Chambers and Carl Myerscough are two of the GB athletes to be caught- both trained in the USA when the offences took place . UKA/British Olympics take a harsh line on this, but did no-one in UKA wonder why Dwain disappeared off to California and came back to the UK muscle bound.
Did no-one in UKA or his team members question this- they must of. Most of us watching him saw the difference, and it failed anyway-he failed.
Deep down I think he knew he could/should not win-he knew he was cheating and that mental problem outweighed his use of performance enhacing training drugs- he has almost admitted as much saying he could not deal with lying to his colleagues in the GB team.
Dwain cheated himself-a hugely talented younster. So why do it- I can only speculate as Dwain will not comment.
But a lot must have to do with the pressure on young athetes to succeed by National Sporting organisations. Athletics is an Amateur sport, so no real money. To make some cash you have to be on the top of the World. You suspect, or know, your competitors are using drugs. So to earn real money you think you have to do the same. Natural talent may not be enough-or so you think.
There is huge money in sporting success, Conte may be trying to clean up, but he caused the problems that have led to Marion Jones being in jail, the rest in the USA and Dwain being discredited.
The clean Dwain is now back to running fast- number one in Uk- but is banned from the Olympics.
A sad tale of a man corrupted by people he will not name. A realy nice guy, looks good know, bumped into him at an Indoor Meeting, the Dwain of Old and running quick.
A waste of talent.
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