A Reeling Sport Is Doing What It Can to Fight Back

All of a sudden, you can see it happening. Track and field, a sport on the ropes and taking heavy punches, has decided to fight back. No 10-count allowed.

Yes, it is an Olympic year and there is so much more at stake now. Yes, the punches landing are hard to see coming, hard to understand and hard to take a stance against.

And yes, this is a sport that is, and always has been, a collection of independent contractors who make a buck devoid of unity and teamwork. You kick the bar off in the high jump, you can’t blame your left tackle in the news conference afterward.

All the problems the sport has had for years -- hesitancy of top stars to compete against each other, so much influence by shoe and apparel companies that meets look more like marketing and branding opportunities than athletic competition -- have paled in comparison to the story breaking out of the Bay Area last fall.

Since then, it has been BALCO here, BALCO there, BALCO, BALCO everywhere.

The Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, run by Victor Conte, made a business out of supplying prominent athletes with “nutritional supplements” that might enhance their performances. Once authorities started investigating, lots of those turned out to be lots more enhancing than nutritional. And lots more illegal.

And so it began. Grand jury hearings, leaked documents, lawyers and members of Congress all over TV and in the newspapers. The main driving ingredient from the start has been innuendo. Who did what to whom? Or for whom? Or with whom? If you don’t have your law degree from Harvard or you weren’t part of the Watergate break-in investigation, you struggle to understand. Or care.

Track and field, about as easy to unify as the Hatfields and McCoys, is starting to care. They held a marvelous meet in Carson Saturday, the Home Depot Invitational, attracted a crowd of 11,266, and it turned into, among other things, a forum for the future of the sport. It probably would have been that way anyway, but it was destined once a story broke earlier in the day in the San Jose Mercury News.

The story, no more and no less murky than lots of BALCO transmissions, reported that former Olympian John Smith, coach of a prominent track team from Irvine named HSI -- Hudson Smith International -- had signed a nondisclosure statement with Conte in 2001. Among the competitors coached by Smith, and part of the team that is run by the former Olympian and his partner/lawyer Emanuel Hudson, is Maurice Greene. Greene was among the stars at Carson and, as it turned out, the 100-meter winner in a dazzling time of 9.86 that was only slightly marred by the semi-hurricane blowing across the scenic plains of Carson and at his back.

So Smith and Hudson were surrounded by reporters. Smith said he signed something, but it didn’t mean anything, that he has to sign similar documents often. Hudson said it was just another BALCO “feeding frenzy,” indicating not incorrectly that the media, on this issue, carry attributes similar to great whites.

The fighting back continued with sprinter and hurdler Gail Devers, a two-time Olympic champion who, at age 37, is still competing on an Olympic level.

“I’m not a negative person,” she said. “I know what is going on in my sport. I say prayers for my sport. ... Let’s leave BALCO alone for a day. BALCO will take care of itself; Senator [John] McCain or whoever is involved with that, they’re going to take care of whatever has to be taken care of.

“Let’s pray that, in 10 years, or when I’m a mother or grandmother in 20 years, that there is still a sport to watch.”

The tone was similar when both Greene and Marion Jones met the media. Greene said he was told about the most recent story and that his people told him it meant nothing. And he said that he is all for the bad guys in his sport, the drug cheaters, to be chased and caught.

Jones, who won the 100 and long jump at Carson and who is probably the biggest star in track and field today, took a counterpunch at USADA, the national sports doping agency that is the main investigator in the BALCO case and that, last week, announced a two-year suspension of sprinter Kelli White for positive doping tests.

Jones was called to testify before the BALCO grand jury, and that act alone has many expecting her to receive some sort of doping sanction, even though she has denied any wrongdoing all along. Recently, she has been increasingly outspoken and defiant in defense of herself and her sport, and her lawyers last week asked USADA for a meeting to find out what is going on.

“I want to know exactly what you guys want to know,” she said. “I want to know what the deal is.”

She also said that the sanction of White meant that “if you do something wrong, you should pay your penalty.” She also somewhat mocked USADA’s statement that White was “courageous” in telling all, but not until after being presented with a large amount of incriminating information.

All in all, it was a day of taking the offense. Track and field is acting as if it is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Which is commendable and correct for a sport currently reeling. It is also essential that those on the counterattack truly be above reproach.

Worth noting in that regard is that last year’s winner of the women’s 100 at Carson was Kelli White.