Our columnist on the fall-out from a Brit athlete failing a doping test at the ITU Worlds
At the ITU World Championships in Cozumel last September a British triathlete failed a drugs test. Trace amounts of clenbuterol, a steroid, were found in his sample and, after swiftly deploying his legal representation, it was successfully argued that the positive result was due to consuming contaminated meat on the Mexican island.
As such, the individual retained his anonymity and, as far as the International Triathlon Union (ITU) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) were concerned, it was ‘case closed’. It also meant, under the current ITU guidelines, that the positive test should never have come to light. Except the athlete’s law firm, Outer Temple Chambers, had other ideas.
Barrister Matthew Phillips won the case to protect the athlete’s identity but then Outer Temple Chambers made a public announcement celebrating the victory. The press release has now been removed from the internet, but exactly what the motivation for making it was remains unclear. Certainly my attempts to find out fell on deaf ears, leaving the only conclusion to draw being that Outer Temple Chambers is completely ignorant of the sensitivity surrounding doping in sport.
Given the handful of possible suspects included a double-Olympic champion, it’s understandable speculation whipped up fast. British Triathlon’s riposte was to issue a statement saying it wasn’t one of its funded athletes, clearing the Brownlees but narrowing the list of suspects still further.
Others have cried foul. Joe Maloy, an American triathlete who finished 23rd in Rio, took to Twitter: “If I’m a British triathlete who raced Cozumel, I want the name to come out so everyone knows it wasn’t me. Where’s the noise? I don’t know why more pro triathletes aren’t irate about this. Our image is at stake.”
Maloy isn’t going to get his wish, but he does raise a valid point about image because there are wider questions here beyond which British triathlete ate a dodgy burger. Triathlon is fresh-faced as a relatively new Olympic sport, untainted by the drugs scandals that have blighted its constituent parts of swimming, cycling and running – and understandably it’s a reputation the ITU wants to protect. But, as we’ve seen in athletics and cycling, refusing transparency can have devastating long-term consequences when inconvenient truths finally come out.
The lessons of Team Sky should be cautionary. Once game-changers with a very public anti-doping stance, they were pilloried for potential abuse of therapeutic use exemptions, after Bradley Wiggins’s medical records were hacked. In the latest storm, Sir David Brailsford claimed the content of a mystery package delivered to Wiggins in 2011 was a harmless decongestant, but that late admission has shattered trust.
It wouldn’t be ethical to name the British triathlete from Cozumel as due process was followed, but I question the need for secrecy within the current system. Why doesn’t the ITU release details of who’s been tested and provide information as to the prevalence of false positives due to clenbuterol contamination? (WADA issued a memo five years ago about the risks of eating meat in Mexico.) Perhaps if we knew these details, a more robust defence could be put to those who ask why a British triathlete should be treated differently from dethroned 2010 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, who also said he’d eaten contaminated meat but received a two-year ban.
One advantage triathlon has over cycling, swimming and athletics is its opportunity to learn from past mistakes in single-discipline pursuits. Time and again it’s been shown that governing bodies are compromised by trying to both police and promote their sport. For triathlon to continue to prosper, full transparency is critical.
Short of an injury to both Brownlees, Adam Bowden was never going to be granted an Olympic slot (and never declared any intention to be picked as a domestique), yet the national triathlon champion secured six top-12 finishes in the World Series to end the year ranked ninth in the world. Despite this he’s been cut from lottery funding. The problem? His age. At 34 he’s deemed too old to be competitive come the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Bowden came to the sport late from track and is still improving. Surely, if you’re good enough, you’re young enough?
The award for the best smile of 2016 must go to Fabienne St Louis of Mauritius. The Olympic Games is a natural setting for inspiration, but it’s not just the preserve of those picking up medals. The triumph for St Louis was just making the start having been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and undergoing several operations to remove infected cells that left her with temporary paralysis of the face. When the time came to line up on the Copacabana, hers was a smile that meant more than most.
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