IT should have been Mike McLeod's finest hour when he receivedhis 1984 Olympic 10,000 metres silver medal, but a damp April day inBattersea Park, dwarfed by power station chimneys, was a surrealvenue for the awards ceremony.
The Geordie had finished third in the Los Angeles final theprevious year, behind Martti Vainio and Alberto Cova. Just dayslater, the Finnish runner-up tested positive for steroids. Stillbaffled as to how he had failed, the Finn was disqualified, thefirst Olym-pic track athlete to lose a medal for doping.
The following year, at the AAA 10,000m road race championships,McLeod finally was presented with a freshly struck silver, before acrowd of dis-interested bystanders and Sunday dog-walkers. Vainiohad refused to surrender the original.
It emerged that he had cheated twice. It was true he had not beenusing steroids in Los Angeles, but he had a few months earlier whena pint of his blood was drawn off to be reinfused close to theGames, to boost his haematocrit, or red cell count.
At that time, two methods of stimulating red-cell output were invogue, one legal, the other morally banned, both indetectable. Thefirst was simply to live and train at altitude, causing the body toproduce more red cells - one reason why Kenyans dominate endurancerunning. The more red cells, the more oxygen the blood can carry,and the greater the tolerance to lactic acid, which makes musclesfeel 'heavy'. The second was to draw off one's own blood, and oncethe body had regenerated the supply naturally, reinfuse it.
Vainio had miscalculated, however. The replaced blood had beentaken off while he was using steroids to help recover from veryintense training.
McLeod refused to return his bronze: 'It was the medal I'd won,'he told me later. So, he uniquely has both. 'If moral justice hadbeen done, I'd also have had Olympic gold.' Cova, who went on tobecome an Italian MP, subsequently was exposed as having blood-doped.
McLeod was cruelly denied his place in history, but now, a third,more sinister blood-boosting agent, threatens even wider havoc. Itemploys a synthetic peptide hormone, erythropoietin (EPO) whichboosts red cell production in bone marrow, increasing performancedramatically, but capable of turning blood to the consistency ofstrawberry jam, and causing strokes or heart attacks.
It has been responsible for deaths in cycling, cross-countryskiing, and orienteering, and it is several years since we reportedhow it was offered to a Scottish champion athlete by a relative of apatient being treated for a serious kidney illness.
EPO, which also occurs naturally, came to prominence when it blewapart the 1998 Tour de France. This year, Russian runner OlgaYegorova failed an EPO test, but escaped sanction on technicalgrounds, prompting demonstrations as she won gold at the WorldAthletics Championships. Horseracing is the latest sport runningscared, though why those whom life has inoculated with even a modestdose of cynicism should be surprised that horses have also beeninjected is a mystery. Horse-doping has a far longer history thanthe Jockey Club, or the agencies which aim to detect and preventnobbling in Britain.
Anything, legal or otherwise, which might make a horse faster,has been tried down through the centuries, yet in the past few daysgreat angst has been generated on the Turf by the news that EPO iscirculating in British stables.
Pardon me, but the only surprise would be if EPO had not beentried many years ago in the industry. The vision of racing as abastion of anti-doping integ-rity beggars belief. Even nuns inclosed orders know better.
Last month, Peter Webbon, chief veterinary adviser to the JockeyClub admitted EPO 'has been abused'.
Subsequently, he was reported in the racing press to have saidthere was 'not a shred of evidence' regarding EPO use, and thatthough horses trained in Britain were tested, there had been noadverse findings.
Stable-owners themselves have shown EPO syringes to sceptics, andLambourn trainer Charlie Mann claims: 'Horses are running on EPOevery day of the week . . . I'm fed up, because nobody is doinganything about it.'
If nobody has been caught, then testing is certainly a waste oftime. It is a fact that the Jockey Club informs trainers the nightbefore arriving at their yard to do sampling, which gives themwarning in advance.
Punters get fleeced enough. It's time for the government tointervene and appoint independent testing in racing. Yet, if sportis in turmoil now, they have only themselves to blame.
EPO is receiving the oxygen of publicity more than 12 years afterthis journal reported (November 4, 1989) on a paper about to bepresented to an International Olympic Committee medical symposium inColorado, by Professor Bjorn Ekblom.
The Swede explained how genetically engineered EPO, then costing$3000 per course of treatment, was achieving superior results to the'traditional' blood doping employed by Vainio. Even then, accordingto Ekblom, the sports black market price was $15,000.
We reported how Ekblom urged the IOC to act. He had done EPOexperiments on human guinea pigs, and one of these, a marathonrunner, likened the effect to being: 'connected to a turbo-charger'. Ekblom reckoned that improvement was of the order of 10%.
Yet Dr Arne Ljungqvist, a member of the IOC medical commission,and also chairman of the medical commission of the InternationalAmateur Athletics Federation, pooh-poohed his compatriot. He brandedhis data as 'unreliable . . . yet to be subject to a full scalereview by a scientific body', and said neither the IOC nor the IAAFwould take any action.
Ekblom was not surprised. In 1972, he had discovered blood dopingby transfusion, and warned about its effects. It took the IOC 14years to ban the practice. They did so soon after Vainio was caughtin Los Angeles. It took a further seven years, after Ekblom'swarning, for the IOC to act and ban EPO. They did so in 1996, againwithout having any test to enforce it.
Dr Ljunqvist remains chairman of the IAAF medical commission. Itis this body which rejected compelling scientific evidence thatnutrition supplements are routinely contami-nated with steroids,frustrating scientists, leaving innocent athletes, such asScotland's Dougie Walker, in doping limbo, and allowing cheats toprosper.
Anti-doping initiatives must be speeded up. They are so slow,they shut the stable door after illegally victorious horses havebolted.
