Tipping point: Doping is getting increasingly hard to ignore

In the 1960s everything was blamed on the system, man, a convenient generalisation which couldn’t disguise the futility of persuading those in power to dismantle the apparatus of what had got them there.

Blaming the culture of something can seem similarly futile, producing little besides snappy sound-bites. But when it comes to doping, it really does come down to changing the culture, man, and the sad reality is wishing for that probably involves wishing forever.

Right now it’s getting increasingly hard to believe an awful lot of what we see or hear about in sport, unless of course you really want to, and then you can believe anything you want. And who wants to believe most of all?

Why, those with a stake in believing everything to be hunky dory: the ones ironically with the clout to change what desperately needs to be changed: those at the top of the system.

There can’t be a more pathetically establishment argument when it comes to doping than reciting numbers of negative tests: no positives equal proof no one’s cheating. It’s the oldest excuse in the book for turning a blind-eye to what you don’t want to see.

It’s the argument the Russian authorities are presenting in reply to accusations of systematic and state-sponsored doping despite a German documentaryshowing film of cheats admitting they cheat. Allegations that up to 99 per cent of the Russian Olympic team dopes, and positive tests getting covered-up by officials, are dismissed as a “pack of lies.”

Blatantly suspicious

And it’s so boring listening to the same stock phrases, the same official desire to not recognise what’s blatantly suspicious to those with no agenda: the whole show-us-the-evidence-and-we’ll-act bit. You’d swear everyone’s forgotten how Lance Armstrong never once tested positive. It is cant which is almost as boring as talking about drugs in the first place, and yet that’s a boring and ugly conversation that desperately needs to be maintained, across all sports.

Rugby is Ireland’s current cause-du-jour, no doubt producing its share of indignant “not-in-our-day” harrumphing by club-blazers unwilling to believe those in possession of expensive educations could indulge in the cartoon preserve of bandy-legged jockeys sticking syringes into nags.

Syringes though aren’t obligatory for doping horses: nitrotain, for instance, is a paste which can be applied orally, leaves the system within a couple of days, and requires a single-figure IQ from the cheat in order for a positive test result to emerge. Some body-builders have been known to use it too, to build muscle mass and presumably leave no room for doubt about their preening idiocy.

I know this because racing has spent much of 2014 struggling to get to grips with the problem of steroids which prior to this year anyone in authority would have assured you wasn’t an issue in the sport at all. And where did such assurance spring from? Because there weren’t any positive tests, that’s why. And there still haven’t been any.

What there has been though is three convictions for possession of steroids, two of them trainers, and another, a former vet, found with “commercial” quantities of banned medicines, and purportedly a client list that has plenty worthies shifting uneasily on their high horses.

However,only for a Department of Agriculture raid on two yards, and customs following a delivery of medicines to its destination, racing’s brass could still point to a spotless testing record for steroids, a record plainly at odds with the day-to-day reality on the ground.

New testing policy

Racing plans to implement a radical new testing policy in 2015, including hair analysis which will not only be capable of detecting steroid use, but also when it was used, a crucial element considering the number of hands a thoroughbred can go through. It is also creating an information line and will pay for information which leads to convictions.

In itself this is an impressive response: ultimately though the most important element behind the policy will be the will behind it, a point that applies across all disciplines and all organisations.

Most sports are governed by those with a stake in that sport, either commercial or sentimental. Instinctively that means most of those at the top want to believe things are okay, and when suggestions arise that they might not be, their impulse is often towards limiting the damage. And that’s not good enough anymore.

The public are way ahead of the suits on this. Too much has happened, and too much denied for so long, to allow anyone but each sport’s equivalent of the plastic-hammer-band continue believing inherent sporting purity is somehow capable of defeating the motivation to cheat in order to profitably win.

So while innocent until proven guilty is a systemic fundamental, the culture behind the fight against doping in sport has to be opposite – as near to guilty-until-proven-innocent as makes little difference.

It’s depressing beyond belief to acknowledge that, but too much has happened for it to be otherwise if credibility is to be maintained. The instinct to believe the best because of a lack of evidence must alter to a mindset which presumes the cheats are always there, always a step ahead. And public trust requires that the fight is continuous, meaningful, and be seen to be so.

Except the odds of those at the heart of the system truly embracing such a culture must be as long as a pothead becoming president. Becoming establishment requires going with the low, not against it. Mind you, Obama liked his smoke: maybe we can wish.