Maurice Greene became the latest high-profile U.S. Olympian dragged into the doping muck over the weekend, clouding the world of track a little bit more as we move toward Beijing. The New York Times article containing the allegation against Greene, which he's denied, also hints that it could just be the tip of the iceberg as the case against Marion Jones's coach, Trevor Graham, makes its way through court. The United States Olympic Committee doesn't see that as any reason to worry about athletes using performance enhancing drugs during the Summer Olympics, though. U.S.O.C. Chairman Peter Ueberroth and chief executive Jim Scherr addressed concerns about their team, although they had slightly different levels of conviction.
"[With] the changes we've made to our doping programs, the protocols we've had in place, we're very confident that this team is clean and we'll field a clean team in Beijing," said Scherr. "Of course there's no way we can guarantee anything. But we feel very good about this team and the progress we've made [against] doping."
"This will be a clean team," Ueberroth said.Scherr went on to call the doping problems part of the past when it's quite clear, from cycling to weightlifting to track, that it is very much a problem of the present. It's great to fight against it, it's great to strive for a clean team but shouldn't Ueberroth know better than to guarantee a clean team?
Coaches have long motivated players by telling them someone, somewhere is practicing so they can whip their butts when they meet on the field. Right now, the truism for the U.S.O.C. is that someone, somewhere is in a lab trying to whip up a new, undetectable formula that can boost an athlete's performance without setting off any red flags in testing.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I'd wait until the 2008 Games were well behind you before starting to crow about how clean your team is and how well the changes you've made have worked.
