The sport of track and field is in total crisis. There is no other way to put it. The news is exposing crimes and corruption that exceed the depth and breadth of even the wildest whisperings of our sports biggest cynics. State sponsored doping, cover-ups, bribes, fake labs, dominant nations without any anti-doping agencies whatsoever, Interpol investigations, leaked lists of suspicious blood values that mix clean athletes with dirty ones, journalists publishing inaccurate information that damages reputations and makes others afraid to speak out, corrupt governing bodies, arrests, whistle blowers seeking political asylum. The list goes on. It’s an unholy mess.
The group that has been harmed most by all this corruption is the clean athletes. Some will get upgraded to long overdue medals that will be met with relief and pain in equal measure. The rest are left to trudge through a swamp of psychological rejectamenta from years of comparing their value and worth to an unreachable, fictional standard. The fans who haven’t already checked out are disgusted, and outraged, and they are looking to the athletes they follow for assurance that some of it was real, to find out which of the magical moments that moved them to watch, follow, and invest in the sport they love were worth it. Our outrage gives them a reason to believe.
But from most athletes, they get silence on the subject: a social media feed peppered with banal workout updates, and snapshots of a lifestyle that is on the verge of irrelevance.
This silence is most often interpreted as, “they must be cheating too.” Or arguably even worse, “they must not care.” What else could possibly explain the disengagement of athletes in this, and other major sport controversies?
Plenty.
Misplaced Trust
We assume things are taken care of by the powers that be. After all, we have to report every hour of every day of our lives to anti doping agencies who can show up at any moment unannounced to take our blood and urine, so surely they must have this under control. Believing otherwise makes the daily violations of privacy and loss of freedom we tolerate in the name of clean sport unfathomable.
No, they don’t have it under control. Testing is ineffective at catching cheats. Kenya decided this month to set up an anti-doping agency for the first time. Others like Russia paid money to have positive tests covered up. The institutions that test us are incomprehensive and corruptible. Do not outsource your engagement. You need to be involved right now.
Fear
We are afraid to speak, because we aren’t confident we really know what is going on in this confusing mess, and unlike you, we need to be really confident before we open our mouths. We know that while you say you want to hear us speak, you really don’t. We learn early that if we say something outside of our area of expertise, and it isn’t 100% full proof and inarguable, we get slammed and shamed. Most of you want us to shut up and run.
And that’s fine because even the educated passionate athletes we’ve seen speaking up in the past don’t seem to get anywhere, and appear to get angrier and angrier over time. And the angrier one gets, the harder it is to put one foot in front of the other. Everyone knows anger and fear aren’t productive places to live in and do great work. In the end, all an athlete can control is herself, and get what she can out of this gift one in a million have the genetic ability, desire, work ethic, and support to pursue.
You may not get all your facts straight, but engaging in the conversation is more important. Start educating by reading this curated list of anti-doping media by Renee Anne Shirley. Follow this twitter list of #cleansport activists, and retweet and engage to learn more. We can’t just take from this sport that we love. Your experience in sport is about more than performances. You are more than your performances. Give your voice to it. The next generation is listening.
Ambition
We are also afraid that the moment we start criticizing is the moment we stop being grateful, and that is the moment our success will disappear. We don’t want to break the spell, because we know that we will need all the magic we can get to reach the top in this sport, especially if we are clean. We see those who are most engaged as bitter, and sad. On the way to retirement. The’ve crossed some invisible line that moves a person from pursuit of excellence to pursuit of change, and now their best performances are behind them.
Gratitude and criticism is not an either/or. It is a both/and. They can and must coexist. Blind gratitude in today’s corruption-riddled era is a euphemism for complacency. You can’t gratitude your way to clean sport. Gratitude is not a verb. Coaches and mentors that encourage fear of engagement see you as a robot to be programmed, and buying into it stunts your development as a human being.
Denial
We tell ourselves cheating is not a problem and suspend reality as a protective mechanism. We choose to assume most are clean because otherwise it’s impossible to do the work and believe in ourselves. We don’t point fingers and don’t jump on the bandwagon when accusations come up. We don’t want to read the articles about it. We believe that even if there are cheaters, we might be able to beat them anyway. We need to believe this like we need air. We understand sports psychology, and the power of positive thinking. We will be different than the clean athletes who lost before. We are “the one.”
You will have your heart broken by cheats. You will also be able to beat them sometimes. But if you don’t acknowledge the reality of cheaters, you will hold yourself accountable to an artificial standard that will break you, in body and in mind. You will likely lose your prime years to injuries this way, and never view your greatest personal victories as enough.
Mixed Messages
We are confused when our own governing body, USATF, celebrates people who have cheated in the past, but we don’t know what to do about it. Destigmatization of the formerly banned athlete appears to be a key brand value and marketing strategy of USATF during a time of international crisis for our sport, and that confuses us. We watch them appoint former cheaters to the honor of being World and Olympic Coaches on teams we are trying to make. We watch them present 2 x banned athlete Justin Gatlin as the face of our sport at the AMA’s, with a room full of stars to choose from, and we feel like we must be missing something. And when anti-doping doesn’t make the agenda at the elite athlete summit in the face of international headlines surrounding our sport’s demise, we ask ourselves, “Are we crazy for caring? What is going on here?”
You are not crazy. We deserve better. Sign and share this petition if a commitment to clean sport is important to you, and if you’d like to have athletes and coaches with clean lifetime records be the faces of our sport.
A Culture of Assimilation
We’ve been told by CEO Max Seigel that we should not feed into bad press about the sport because it damages the sport’s reputation and makes it harder for him to get the sponsorship dollars from big companies that keep the sport alive. We are asked to be “team players” and “get on board” when concerns are raised. The culture places not only philosophical value but also monetary value on assimilation. We saw Nick Symmonds get left off the World Team. We understand what can happen if we speak up.
We call our leaders up to their best work when we engage. Anger is not a sustainable place – but constructive dialogue, and the holding of our leaders is. We need to do this both as individuals, and as a collective. As John Neal said, “A certain amount of opposition is of great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind.”
And Still…
The international news stories keep breaking as our sport falls apart, so we read a few articles to try to figure out what it all means. It is terrible, and confusing, and just seems to go deeper and deeper. We don’t know which sources to trust, or which agencies are empowered to fix it. There is no action plan in place for athletes, no leader to rally behind, and in the meantime nothing we say or do will affect the outcome.
So we stay silent, and wait for someone to fix it.
I was that person once. Sometimes I want to go back.
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Engagement tips for everyone (athletes, fans, industry folks):
Follow this twitter list.
Read some of these articles.
Sign this petition.
Speak up using #cleansport, #makeriogreat
Also for elite athletes:
Email your AAC event leader and ask to be added to the Athletes’ Advisory Committee email list to stay up to date, and also email them any questions, or concerns you’d like them to address on your behalf at the annual meeting and beyond. It’s their job as an elected leader.
Any other ideas, please add them to the comments.
Thank you!
Some will get upgraded to long overdue medals that will be met with relief and pain in equal measure.
It’s worse than pain though. What little money makes it into the athlete’s pocket for winning at-that-time-and-place and the revenue bump that immediately follows is gone. That seems like a very bitter pill to swallow for a clean athlete.
Athletes cannot rely upon their national or international federation in any way to provide some confidence an elite national/international podium is clean. The only answer for a clean athlete is to publish their scores. Because sports administration is so thoroughly corrupt, there is no other choice for a clean athlete.
For the casual reader, if an athlete is in a testing pool including managing whereabouts information, then they have access to their own scores with a web site.
I wish it were different.
As the doping problem became more apparent I lost interest in professional athletics and focused on the amateur scene. Until that is I was casually offered PEDs by a Dr who was also a professional endurance athlete, and now all I’m wondering just how widespread this problem is and who I’m running against at a very amateur level who isn’t competing cleanly (I said no btw..!)
Exactly! It’s not just about the pros. Amateur athletes/age groupers are taking advantage of a medical system with doctors willing to help them out. I mean, what will it harm if they prescribe testosterone supplements to a masters’ runner? It will make their life better, right? I have heard first hand from well-decorated age groupers who justify competing while taking banned substances because their doctor prescribed it. They have somehow convinced themselves that medically necessary=not illegal. It is up to the individual athlete to be honest with themselves and the rest of the running/cycling community and not compete if they want to take the substances for health reasons. Since testing is almost non-existant in masters’ competitions, they know they can get away with it.
That is horrible about that Doc! Please report the doc to USADA via their website. This doc could be a key to catching many cheats! Thanks for the comment and for caring.
I never thought about that, I’ll check it out thanks. What surprised me the most is I thought conversations like this would take place in whispers behind closed doors, only it was slipped in as easily as you might suggest taking a multivitamin every morning with no reference to how ethical it wasn’t. It was then followed up in an email, after I’d said no twice stating the doping rules applied to amateurs too, suggesting that if I went down that route to do it out of a competition period!
Lauren,
What would be the point of reporting the doctor? USADA is the equivalent of a mall cop.
The doctor has committed no crime either. As the infamous Spanish doping doctor Fuentes loosely stated in court, “The amount of training elite athletes do is unhealthy. I bring them back to health.” If a doctor is any good at all, the doper is never testing positive.
If wishes were fishes then NADO could “gift wrap” doping doctor evidence of distributing PEDs, send it over to law enforcement to prosecute and do the same for their medical license. I think that would discourage distribution. Any effort to set that up would be fought bitterly by USOC, NCAA, AMA, and the pro ball sports.
Without a doubt, it’s a widespread activity in age-graded competition. Who exactly? I don’t know and that’s not for me to say anyway. The enormous number of anti-aging clinics is a clue how widespread it is.
I do think Lauren has a good point about the doctors leading USADA to the cheats, though I imagine it would be tough to get medical info about athletes due to HIPAA. I agree that the docs aren’t doing anything illegal. It’s the athletes choosing to compete that bear the responsibility. As Sarah noted, the athlete can always say no.
When I read about the latest unbelievable scandal, I instantly thought of you, Lauren, as an elite athlete who could lead the impetus for change around the issue of doping in sport. I am amazed by the underwhelming response so far from the elite community. Your article helps me understand this lack of response better. Changing the culture is going to be very difficult for sure .
Thank you, Lauren, this is terrific. Just a thought. It seems like even for athletes afraid to engage in the discussion, they could certainly speak up that they believe in #cleansport and practice #cleansport. Even putting it in their Twitter/Facebook bio, etc. That is a POSITIVE statement that sponsors should be thrilled to see! I know as fan, I would be glad to see that assertion.
Thanks Lauren for this thoughtful and articulate post.
Well said.
…P…
I still maintain that track & field is a relatively clean professional sport. No, I can’t prove that; but my theory goes that the greater the financial incentive to succeed, the greater number of cheaters you’ll have. It’s simply a case of human nature. You want to find the cheaters? Follow the money, just like any other profession. And track & field is nothing close to the cash cow that FIFA, NFL, NBA, MLB are. I would be shocked to find out that there are any clean athletes in the NFL. Even the kickers. If a bit of doping meant the difference between being some schlub selling insurance like everyone else; or pulling in anywhere between a half million to 4+ million per year, I think it’s a safe bet those guys are doping, just like the rest of ’em.
Blake, if your theory were true then no masters cyclists would dope as there are less incentives for them than for professional track and field athletes. Yet, time and time again, masters cyclists are caught doping. And many more dope and are never caught. This is not a money issue. It is about trying to prove you are worthy of praise at any cost.
Wise and well said, Wally! I believe you hit the nail on the head! Humans will risk early death and future suffering for what essentially boils down to wanting to be loved!
Thanks Lauren. This issue is at the heart of the sport and it demands more outrage from the professional athletes themselves. I think you all need to be less polite. It has come to a point where people WANT it to “get worse” before (hopefully) it “gets better,” and royally pissed off clean athletes mouthing off to anybody who will listen and raising hell about the corruption in the governing bodies could generate a greater audience (and progress, one hopes) on these issues. What really is there to lose!? Some journalists have done great work exposing the mess, but it is the athletes after all we are driven to cover.
Thanks for writing this, Lauren!
Thanks for giving your honest point of view. Any more words of wisdom to the fans who never really wanted to become poisoned by the cynicism but at the same time don’t want to be blind, manipulated, unconscious and naive when they see performances that seem too good to be true, hear about suspicious blood values and witness denials that sound just exactly like the kind of denials we’ve heard so many times before… Who do we trust, what can we believe in?? Probably unanswerable questions especially for someone in your position, as you’ve explained above. Dark days indeed.
I think they should just make separate leagues for sports like they do for bodybuilding. That way the people who want to dope can dope and don’t have to lie about it, and they’ll be separate from the people who want to stay natural. Everyone wins… I think?