Modahl's case validates system

Time passes, but the old arguments remain the same. It's been only six years since the key events, but you couldn't count how many times since then some wooden-top has waved his index finger and said, "But what about Diane Modahl?"

Finding accurate detail on the case was always about as easy as extracting candour from Liam Lawlor. Popular opinion and radio callers had it that Ms Modahl gave a sample which was then taken to the funfair, splashed about at a wake, degraded with baked beans and forced into a shotgun marriage to testosterone extracted from several bulls from Pamplona.

In truth, the case and its outcomes, which include financial ruin for both Modahl and the British Athletic Federation (BAF), was never a shorthand case for proving anything, but instead provided a jarring insight into the conditions in which the battle against drugs in sport has been fought.

Those who make the most noise with their rattles were a little quiet about the Diane Modahl case this past week. Modahl has always been Joan of Arc for those sunny little Pollyannas who see the world as being filled with honest-to-goodness athletes struggling to protect themselves against oppressively powerful conspiracies involving large organisations and hundreds of people. Last week that view changed a little.

Modahl lost her British High Court claim for £1 million in compensation, having claimed that she didn't receive a fair hearing from the BAF in 1994. Among those members of the five-person disciplinary panel specifically accused of bias were Dr Martyn Lucking and Mr Al Guy.

In case you're sketchy: Modahl competes in the San Antonio Stadium in Lisbon on June 18th, 1994, provides a urine sample which is kept in an office from Saturday, June 18th, until it arrived at the Lisbon laboratory at 4.0 p.m. on June 20th. Temperature at the hottest part of day between 70 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Samples taken from eight other athletes at the June 18th meet. Only one, Modahl's, appears to have degraded.

On August 24th, Modahl is informed. Suspended on September 6th, 1994. On December 13th the BAF hearing took place at which she is banned for four years from June 18th, 1994. Wins her appeal in July 1995. IAAF initially refuses to accept the decision of the appeal panel. Does so in spring of 1996. You'll remember too that she was alleged to have the testosterone level of a horny baboon and that her sample was allegedly left on a window-ledge for half the summer.

Some things that should be noted: her innocence was restored; the system ultimately worked. There was only a small element of doubt, but the appeal (a year later) gave her the benefit of that element of that doubt. The original BAF panel with which Al Guy and Martyn Lucking made their decision had far less scientific evidence than was available at the appeal the following year.

The allegations of bias against both men are remarkable and interesting in what they reveal about the mindset of modern athletes. Dr Lucking was accused of bias because of an exchange he allegedly had with the remarkable Mr Linford Christie in 1990, in which Lucking allegedly said that all accused athletes were guilty until proved innocent. Lucking claims that he uttered something a little different, but either way the comment was unremarkable. Once an A sample shows an athlete to have tested positive, the case is unavoidably about proving innocence.

As for Al Guy, Ms Modahl's objection was even more tenuous: "If I had been told of Mr Guy's involvement in the EEA, and in doping control in particular, than my attitude towards him would have been very different. I would have done everything possible to have him removed as a member of the disciplinary committee."

In other words, Linford Christie and Diane Modahl were of the view that two people who were against doping in sport could not sit impartially on a disciplinary committee, could not ensure that fairness, transparency and justice were served. From this she hoped to win a million.

She should now cut her losses and run: she has her name back and, all things considered, that's as good as it gets.

Many have absorbed the implications of the Modahl case. Unfamiliarity with procedures, vagueness as to chain of custody, unsatisfactory storage procedures in Lisbon, etc, as evidenced in the accounts given by Dr David Cowan, amongst others, aren't good enough.

IOC monitoring has improved, and if anybody cared to attend the hearings or check the accounts, the procedures carried out by Dr Jordi Segura and his team in Barcelona in the de Bruin case were exemplary by comparison. The de Bruin cases proceeded with absolute caution, including three findings of the banned drug androstenodione in samples taken from November 1997 to March 1998. The highest density occurred in that famous January test which suggested administration of the drug 10-12 hours before the test occurred. Barcelona watched and waited and analysed.

In Lausanne, we heard too from University of Lausanne forensic sciences department, where Monique Bonfanti and Prof Pierre Margot had tested many different methods of breaching the security of the canisters used to store the and each method had left marks of some sort. No marks of any sort were detectable on the de Bruin canisters.

All this was so painstaking and so fair to the defendant that the lessons of Modahl must surely have been absorbed into it. Modahl will fight on, and so will testers like the Guys. The lesson from serious examination is that those who police sport are good and earnest people and we have yet to see evidence of a malicious stitch up.