Overtime | Jones disappoints with steroid use

Kyle Nelson Columnist

Last year I wrote a scathing critique of the media’s attack on Marion Jones. In 2004, the track legend was accused of doping before her victory in the 2000 Sydney Olympics by Victor Conte, founder and head of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. Soon after, her ex-husband, a pair of investigative reporters and the popular American news media jumped on the bandwagon. Suddenly, Jones was public enemy number one, especially once a sample taken in 2006 tested positive.

However, when her other, more definitive sample tested negative and she was cleared, fanfare did not ensue. I thought the whole effort was a bit fishy, a tactic of the witch-hunting era that our country cannot leave behind. Not only did I support Jones, but I also talked about how irresponsible it was to take a condemning stance when there was little to no substantiated evidence.

Well I was wrong, very wrong it seems. Jones duped me just as she duped an entire country. A couple of weeks ago, Jones admitted to having lied to a federal court about her steroid usage before her Sydney victories. In early October, Jones forfeited her five medals (including three gold medals). She is serving a two-year suspension from the sport and could spend up to six months in a federal prison for perjury as well.

Jones’s situation is different from that of just about every sports cheater in recent memory. Unlike José Canseco (author of The Juice and baseball’s most unapologetic juicer) or Floyd Landis (puppy dog- faced, excusemeister, Tour de France cheater), it was hard to hate Jones. She defended herself against multiple allegations of doping and cheating, painting the Olympic anti-doping agency as evil witch hunters. We defended her and labeled the process flawed, while the real culprit was staring us in the face and lying the entire time.

The implications of Jones’s admission are not immediately clear, but they could have an impact on sports forever. Personally, I am starting to lose faith in the entire concept of fairness in sports. While Mr. Major League Baseball Bud Selig, Mr. National Basketball Association David Stern, Mr. National Football League (NFL) Roger Goodell, and the International Olympic Committee try to assure the sports world that their respective institutions are clean and fair, the reality is that they are corrupt and flawed.

Are we at the point where we can just admit that all athletes use some sort of performance enhancement? In an age where physical perfection is demanded from athletes on all levels, it seems as if just about everyone has access to performance enhancers. With the recent glut of sports celebrities admitting to cheating, how many of their fans follow in their footsteps? How many Joneses are out there at the top of their sport, wearing dirty medals?

The solution? As I said cynically in a past column on steroids in baseball, the solution seems obvious: legalize performance enhancers. The regulations we currently have are a joke. They neither prevent nor deter athletes from cheating and gaining an unfair advantage. If the current system isn’t working, there either needs to be a change in rules or a complete eradication of the rules in the first place.

Before you get too upset, I have a rationale. If players are doping anyway and most of them (think NFL) are playing against each other without scrutiny or punishment, then just let them play! The reason we find ourselves wanting to defend the accused so much to begin with is because of how unfairly we view the entire process. Everybody knows that people are getting away with it, and only a select, high-profile few are feeling the punishment. Therefore, let’s abandon the time-tested-and-failed concept of witch hunting and just let these athletes play.

Maybe with a laissez-faire perspective, the usage of steroids and performance enhancers will go out of style. Who knows? All I know is that the current system benefits few and only helps to create more of a disparity in the way that modern athletes train and perform. Imagine if Jones were running against other performance-enhanced athletes. There’s nothing unfair about that, and I guarantee you that when she tested positive back then, she took a fall for some runners in her situation. Does this system seem a little flawed to you?

I’m not saying that what Jones did was right, and I’m certainly not trying to cover my own behind for my gullibility. However, I am arguing that we have created this landscape in professional sports and that Jones’s actions are not as dishonest as the media and the sports world want them to be. In a sport that demands athletes to push their bodies to the absolute limit and requires perfection, there is too much pressure for a regular person to handle. We assume that athletes are above regular people and are all as physically strong as they are mentally. Nevertheless, if Jones’s case has any moral, it is that athletes are human and do buckle under the intense pressure for the perfection we demand of them.

Instead of treating Jones as an exception to the rule, we, as a society, should look for different kinds of exceptions. Let’s look for positive examples of people who have succeeded based on raw determination and effort.

One thing that Jones teaches us is that we need to fix the system at the level of the athletes, but also look deeper and fix it at the level of our own complicity. We wanted her to be innocent for a reason. If these are the people we are idolizing, we have to re-evaluate our priorities and find role models and heroes worth emulating.

The point is that this is not an issue about abusing performance enhancers in sports; it is an issue of our society allowing performance enhancers in the sports world. Hopefully, if we are able to realize this, the next time a Jones, Landis or a Mark McGwire (we’re still waiting for your confession, Marky Mark) comes out and lies to our faces about their steriod use, we’ll see them for who they really are: exceptions in an otherwise fair sports world. No more lies.

Kyle Nelson ’09 is an English and Africana Studies double-major. This semester he is editorializing on issues in national athletics.