Transsexual ruling only muddies waters

Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: You have to hand it to the Olympic family. Just as America is simmering with the salacious prospect of seeing the queen of the sprint world shorn from its Olympic team as part of a crack down on substance abuse, the IOC have muddied the waters further.

The ruling that transsexuals be allowed compete at Athens and all future Games was undoubtedly motivated by an egalitarian principle. But because it officially brings into the international sporting community athletes who have undergone a radical and life-altering course of hormone treatment, it is bound to provide a further smokescreen for the malevolent practitioners of science who engineer the substances that seduce athletes like Kelli White.

White's admission of taking the latest pharmaceutical accessory, THG, and her willingness, cynical or otherwise, to aid the investigating body, the United States Anti-Doping Agency, in exposing similarly guilty athletes has further turned the spotlight on the world's pre-eminent track athlete, Marion Jones. The more you hear and read of the American investigations, the more you get the sense there is an unspoken but very real media bloodlust when it comes to comments on Jones's links to the disgraced health supply company Balco.

That the Athens Olympics could yet showcase one of its highlights - the women's 100 metres final - without the best female sprint athlete of the modern era - is hard to imagine. But the fact that NBC are already publicly discussing broadcasting Olympic events other than athletics if the more prominent members of the USA squad are left behind in disgrace is as good an indication as any that this could happen.

The brash and aggressive manner with which that body is investigating athletes linked to the ruined Balco laboratory must be unnerving for those whose names have been mentioned in connection with its produce - including Jones and her husband, world 100 metres record holder Tim Montgomery. Jones has already stated that she will issue a law suit if USADA-based insinuations prevent her from further burnishing her reputation in Athens.

For such a charming and persuasive media performer, Jones has definitely made some contradictory career choices since winning three gold medals in Sydney. Lauded as she was in the warm evenings at Homebush, the legacy of her medal haul was compromised by her marriage to a proven drugs cheat, CJ Hunter.

His embarrassing, sobbing public performance at Sydney in the wake of revelations of his nandrolone abuse might have unhinged Jones' medal prospects were she not so mentally resilient and so clearly superior to the field. Since that time, her relationship with Hunter has dissolved. She and Montgomery acquired the services of the notorious Charlie Francis, the trainer behind Ben Johnson. And she has testified in court about her dealings with Balco.

Having recently given birth to the couple's first child, Jones returned to sprinting in the spring and posted desultory times compatible with an athlete who had just spent a term in labour. So her life has changed beyond recognition since she departed Sydney as the most bright and pleasing face of athletics, a sport in perpetual need of an ambassador with public relation skills. In 2001, Jones appeared on the cover of Vogue fashion magazine, significant because she was the first athlete in over a century to do so and because it suggested that athletic stars might vault into the mainstream.

Since the Balco laboratories came under investigation earlier this year, there have been indirect suggestions that the results would have catastrophic consequences for major stars. The biggest fish in the potential catch would be Barry Bonds, the aloof and indomitable batsman for the San Francisco Giants who, in his 40th year, is chasing one of the most revered records in the archive of the national pastime: Ted Williams' 1941 batting average of .400.

In terms of athletics, Jones is really the only figure capable of creating that wow factor. They could ban all the shot putters in the world and nobody would blink an eye. Even Kelli White's admission of guilt has been treated as merely another dirty athlete flushed out by an imperfect system that works every so often. And it was something of a joke that the athlete who was bumped into White's stripped gold medal placing, Anastasiyia Kapachinskaya, was herself involved in a positive test for steroids at the world indoor championships.

Jones, sunny and friendly in a icy kind of way, has been unbreakable under the weight of her associations and most written American commentary on her is ambivalent, much more so than is the case with Bonds. If, over the next month or so, USADA presents evidence against her, she won't go down without a fight. And if she is prevented from starring in Athens, either through a ban or through being overlooked for selection , it will be the loudest statement of intent by the American - and by extension the international - athletics movements to clean up the game.

Whether Jones has used chemical substances is merely a matter for conjecture at present. The inclination here, however naïve, is to believe she has not: she had no need. No chemical substance could account for the chasm between her and the blurred gang behind her. It could well be Jones is guilty of nothing more than poor decision making and the veiled hostility towards her comes down to a general disillusionment with high athletic achievement.

But the prospect of Jones being hung out to dry is just one of the many negatively tantalising stories as Athens builds up. Possibly because of the implications of White turning witness for the prosecution, the IOC's induction of transsexual athletes was allowed to become a quiet reality. It is a sensitive issue and ideally there is no reason why an athlete should be precluded from competing based on birth gender discrimination. But the Olympics can afford to trade in ideals through slogans only. In reality the Olympics deals in murkiness and the chemical freight that will follow transsexual athletes has mind-boggling implications for the frightening marriage of sport and science.

Given the tragic and grotesque stories of freak physical disfigurement that have emerged from athletes who represented the former Eastern Bloc countries 20 and 30 years ago, it is impossible to believe this gender extension won't be abused in the years to come.

For this issue is not a million miles away from the original Olympic spirit towards drug testing. The IOC Medical Commission was formed in 1961 "because of a need to determine femininity" according to the memoirs of Lord Killanin, published nearly a quarter of a century ago.

"There had been suspicions that certain outstanding women athletes were more masculine than feminine," he wrote, "and to avoid the suspicion, pain and embarrassment which this caused, the IOC Commission set up a femininity test."

Men in monocles inspecting the assembled skirts, one imagines. Testing has moved on to a more sophisticated level since then but you can't help but think the Olympic movement has a nerve bringing the mad, bloated and highly confused carnival back to the ancient site in its current state. You can't help but feel the gods - male, female and even Hermaphroditus - won't be best pleased.