Are my sporting heroes clean? This is a question that has been bothering me for some time. We have now seen so many high profile athletes test positive for performance enhancing drugs, and the reactions from various quarters of the globe vary.

We have opinions from the press, former athletes, current athletes, coaches and Joe Bloggs who loves his sport. When I say heroes I’m not referring to any of the many athletes who have already tested positive. They have already tarnished their reputation, and despite the wonderful memories I have of Linford Christie winning Olympic Gold, or Katrin Krabbe winning the sprint double at the World Athletics Championships in 1991, I can never hold their victories as dear as I once did.

No, the heroes I am referring to are the ones who have career to date, or have finished their careers without the shame of a positive test, or the bad smell that follows an athlete even though they never tested positive. Think Marion Jones or Tim Montgomery, and many former Eastern Block athletes from the 70s and 80s.

'The sad fact is, in many sports we have reached a point where an athlete who has never tested positive isn’t a clean athlete, merely one who hasn’t tested positive yet'


Some athletes are very outspoken anti-drugs campaigners. Paula Radcliffe is one of the most active and high profile campaigners, whilst others offer no public opinion. Should an athlete offering no public opinion be under greater suspicion than Paula Radcliffe for example? Others have made anti-drugs statements and later been caught cheating.

Linford Christie was always outspoken against the use of performance enhancing drugs, and yet returned a positive test in 1999 for metabolites of the steroid Nandralone. Maybe he was clean in the early 90s when ruling the world at the 100 metres. Unfortunately Christie has given us reason to be suspicious.

The sad fact is, in many sports we have reached a point where an athlete who has never tested positive isn’t a clean athlete, merely one who hasn’t tested positive yet. None of us truly understand the extent to which performance enhancing drugs are affecting the world of sport. Sure, many of us have opinions, some of which are educated, but it’s only the athletes who know for sure if they are clean.

Imagine for a moment that this statement was true: "The majority of athletes in certain sports are using performance enhancing drugs!"

Could it be there is an unwritten code of conduct between the athletes?

1) If you take banned substances in certain sports, you are accepted by other athletes because the majority are doing the same.
2) Don’t get caught. If you do, you are on your own. Other athletes will not pass comment on your positive test, but if pushed will condemn you as a cheat to protect their good name and that of their sport.

Don’t go thinking that my scenario that the majority of athletes in some sports are using performance enhancing drugs can’t happen, because they would all be testing positive. Many sports have excellent testing programmes.  The problem is the cheats and laboratories have been, and continue to be, at least one step ahead. The labs are developing new drugs, the testers are developing effective methods to detect them, and no matter how efficient the testing processes are, they are always playing catch up.

I remember reading an article in August 2006, written by a sporting legend (a hero of mine), whose achievements can only be described as phenomenal, and that really doesn’t do justice to the magnitude of his career legacy. He was outspoken about Justin Gatlin and Floyd Landis and condemned their actions, naturally, what else would we expect. As a newspaper columnist his job is to comment on the big sporting issues. We can hardly expect a former great who was, as far as we know clean, to write “go easy on Gatlin and Landis because they are only using the same substances many other athletes are using”.

If the unwritten code of conduct (above) does exist in some sports, it makes believing my heroes are clean very hard to do. It makes a mockery of the ideology of a fair sporting contest. In many sports the romance of man v man using only the skills they were born with is a distant memory. We desperately want to believe our heroes are clean, but every positive test is a nail in the “Fair Sporting Contest” coffin.

Is this a fair reflection on the state of drugs in sport? Post your comments below or submit an article to Sportingo.