Hard drugs and soft questions

Mark Saggers, who we all remember for famously calling the Michelle de Bruin case wrong in this newspaper, was on Sky News on Wednesday. Saggers and his team were applying their investigative talents to Mark Richardson, who became the latest British runner caught taking nandrolone, a banned steroid. Richardson followed Linford Christie, Dougie Walker and Gary Cadogan in testing positive for the same product.

The inference of Sky to the "rash" of nandrolone positives was that there was evidently something wrong with the supplements the runners had taken. Walker and Cadogan had being slurping down the same stuff as Richardson. They had footage of Richardson, a camera-friendly guy, claiming that he wanted to take a lie detector test to prove his innocence. Nice touch.

No one bothered to tell him that the science behind finding that he had metabolised nandrolone is much finer and has greater probity than a hit-and-miss lie detector test. No one asked him why he continued to take the same legal supplement that had already snookered Walker and Cadogan. Nobody reminded him that supplements are not regulated and therefore you cannot depend on what is written on the cover. This is widely known.

He was asked where he would be if he had not taken the supplement at all and replied: "At the same place." In other words, that the supplement gave him absolutely no competitive edge. Odd that. On the covers of such products as Viper, Enduro or Promax they don't say `these products will give you absolutely no edge in your chosen sport'.

What Sky and also BBC, ITV and to a lesser extent RTE failed to do this week (just a fortnight after Stephen Roche had been put in the dock over alleged use of the banned EPO) was to ask some basic questions about the whole issue of drug-taking. Questions like why is it wrong to take drugs and why does the responsibility rest with the athletes to ensure they are drug-free. Or can Richardson, as an athlete, see the point of the rules.

What didn't come across on any network was that far from a sense of grievance that these athletes have tested positive, there is an alternative and overwhelming feeling of satisfaction that drug cheats are being caught. What is being sold on television as a freakish cluster of nandrolone positives is actually evidence of the good guys making progress.

In time-honoured tradition Richardson ambled up to the camera to take the dirty war to a different front in the way both Stephen Roche and Michelle de Bruin have done. In the blizzard of accusations and counter accusations the truth, as always was elusive. That's why the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) have such a simple law. Their attitude is `the stuff is in your system son. Hard luck. Be more careful next time. You're out of the Olympics'. They don't deal in moving targets and they are right. They see further down the road.

They can see that the drug-takers in sport are driving up the ante every year for those coming behind. They can see how the cheats are constantly changing the character, purpose and construction of sport to such a degree that in some disciplines children can no longer aspire to winning Olympic or World Championship medals because to do so would necessitate the use of banned substances. Paradoxically, to do so would be unhealthy.

The IAAF and the IOC may be flawed organisations and their laws on drug-taking may also be. But they have one thing right. If a banned drug is in an athlete's body then the likelihood (tampering with urine samples aside) is that the athlete put it there.

Eurosport provided light relief with The European Skating Championships all week. In skating it's not drugs but an iron bar across the legs of your rival. Crude but effective. There is always a way for even stupid people to cheat.

Ireland has not emotionally bought into skating, which contains an unusual concept for judging called interpretation. Most sports shy away from arbitrary measures such interpretation.

Sport naturally lends itself to rigid rules and regulations, league tables, average scores, bonus points for tries, percentage first serves, goal difference. Entities that can be added and subtracted. Imagine if in Manchester United's game against Leeds next week points were awarded for interpretation. Well, Roy Keane would be worth even more money.

Ireland will probably never have a Molly from Dolphin's Barn who likes to design her own outfits, skating in the European Championships. If we did we'd all be watching Sue Barker, who seems to be given a lot of the light stuff on BBC. But when she said "here's the much anticipated duel between the two Russians Yevgeni Plushenko and Alexei Yagudin," we said whoa, heavy stuff Sue-zap.

Even lighter relief was provided on Saturday night when Pat Kenny hosted the celebrity All-Ireland at the Point Depot. A disquieting volume of self publicists had congregated in the one area in Dublin. The models, who were actually working, take what are known as supplements too. Food. It keeps them alive.

There were a few interlopers. Chris Eubank and Steve Collins brought their vaudeville act to the stage. Live theatre is always more satisfying, don't you think. Don't you just love the adrenaline rush of an unpredictable audience.

Charity aside, you couldn't help but feel that Steve and Chris are going to try to get it on again. Now that should be banned.