Pat Forde + Logic = Train Wreck
See if you can find the problem with this sequence of ideas. (Re: 41 year old American Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, who just finished an amazing Olympic trials in which she set several personal records and even one American record even though she's coming off of multiple surgeries.)
Torres has never tested positive for any performance enhancers to my knowledge. She's requested random blood and urine testing from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and said she wants to be "an open book."
Torres met with USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart last year and, according to a report in The New York Times, decided to volunteer for a pilot program under the agency that "tests more broadly" for doping through blood and urine samples.
"Can USADA give Dara or some other athlete the stamp of cleanliness?" Tygart asked the newspaper. "No, the science isn't there yet." But he added, "I think a dirty athlete would be crazy to volunteer for this program."
According to the report, Tygart has yet to release any of Torres' results, but she told reporters here at the trials this week that she has been randomly tested "probably about 12 to 15 times since March."
But locking up a stunning fifth Olympic appearance on the Fourth of July by winning the 100-meter freestyle makes me wonder whether too good to be true is the same thing as too good to be clean.
It's true. I'll address it in detail at the end of the post, but it's fine to feel like that about something like this. It's only natural. However, don't justify those feelings like this:Baseball and other sports have poisoned the well to the point that Torres' late-career renaissance reminds me of too many fraudulent fairy tales that have been foisted off on the gullible American public.
We were supposed to believe Roger Clemens was a dominant pitcher in his 40s because he trained harder and smarter than everyone else. We were supposed to believe Barry Bonds was capable of hitting 73 home runs at age 37 because he was simply that good and had worked tirelessly to build his body naturally. We were supposed to believe these miracles of human preservation, but we've since been given reason to believe they really were lying cheaters instead.
Hey, DUMMY- there's a key difference between the drug testing Olympic athletes go through and the drug testing MLB players went through prior to 2005. (Actually, there are still a lot of differences between the programs, but let's just say the gap has been narrowed at least a little.) Google it and see if you can sort the situation out.Listen, I'm all for skepticism when it comes to extraordinary athletic accomplishments in this day and age. There's no way around it- the proliferation of PEDs means that anyone who does something incredible is bound to come under some degree of scrutiny. That's fair. I have no problem with it. So in that sense, I have no fundamental problem with Pat's article. What she's done is pretty unbelievable... maybe too unbelievable to be clean. As Chad himself says, no one has ever swum like she just did at this age. But here's the problem- if you're going to write an article about this kind of sports-related skepticism, comparing an Olympic athlete's allegedly clean accomplishments to the allegedly clean accomplishments of MLB players in the late 90s/early 00s is fucking preposterous. Really? Being Barry Bonds, and just saying you're clean, is the same thing as Dara Torres and volunteering for an extremely rigorous pilot testing program? At least compare her accomplishments to Floyd Landis's, or something.
And yes, I know that there is no testing routine that's anywhere close to perfect or comprehensive. A very decent sized chunk of the athletes competing in Beijing this summer will be dirty, and almost all will get away with it. I'm just saying... it's fucking ridiculous to say that it's hard to enjoy Torres's accomplishments specifically because of untested cases like Bonds and Clemens. Go jump in a lake, Pat Forde.
Special thanks to last Friday's anonymous commenter for tipping me off about this article.
3 comments:
Mostly I agree with his piece. It felt rushed, and that he could have written a better one, with his thoughts more square on what he wanted to say. A longer article wouldn't have used Bonds and Clemens as it's only examples, it would have mentioned Landis, Michelle Smith (the Irish swimmer), hell he could have even gone as far back as Ben Johnson. In the end, I don't mind the topic of the article, but it could have been done better. The overall tone I think is true, it's how he delivers it that is somewhat off. I know the first rection I had when I read about what Torres was doing was admiration and doubt all rolled into one.
I think that Forde runs into the problem also of, if nobody says anything, and then she tests positive, the public gets angry over being fed the hype and feel good story by the press. If he does write something, he gets negative feedback accusing him convicting her with no evidence. Go look at the comments at ESPN, they aren't like Larry, who is making an argument about the form of the article, not it's topic. These people are all up in arms that how dare the idea that this athletic feat is causing skepticism even be mentioned. they want to live in a Pollyanna world, and when it's revealed that it isn't, want to blame others for not letting them know sooner.
Yeah but Martin, seriously, it's ridiculous to assume that everyone who does something athletically impressive is juicing simply because it's impossible to prove they're not.
I don't mean to jump to hyperbole, but I don't think I am when I say this sort of mentality is akin to McCarthyism.
Here's a woman who
a.) takes part in a sport with rigorous, albeit flawed, anti-doping procedure
and
b.) who has volunteered to submit to additional rigor to remove vestigial skepticism surrounding her achievement.
If we can't just move on from that point without waxing ad nauseum about doping in sports, then what the fuck is our deal? It is what it is. And to act like the burden of proof starts when achievement begins, a burden of proof that can never be obtained, is just ridiculous.
Look with skepticism on former dopers, sure. Be aware that all sports are slightly tainted by the spectre of performance enhancing drugs.
But getting this worked up about this shit is like getting worked up that your wife might be cheating on you just b/c you can't be by her side 24 hours a day.
That's not to say it's IMPOSSIBLE she's cheating on you. Certainly she has the opportunity and could do so undetected for a long time, possibly forever. But if you go day to day making that assumption not only will you be miserable, but that also reflects poorly on your own mindset.
In other words: get over the performance enhancing drugs thing. What good does it do the fan to obsess over it?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have skepticism. We all could have used a lot more of that back in '98.
However- if the ath-a-lete in question demonstrates this high a level of transparency, I think we owe he or she the benefit of the doubt. Bonds never came to us with hat in hand and said "please let me prove my innocence." He just tried to ignore the whole thing. Just saying that your records are clean is a far cry from saying "here is my record, here are my samples, I swear I'm clean and here is how you can check."
Just this one time, I can put away the cynicism.
Post a Comment