Pool controversy

An interesting piece of olympic news: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/olympics/2008/07/hardys_dope_test_leaves_questi.html : The US Swim team has been training at Stanford for the last few weeks since their trials in Omaha. They leave either today or tomorrow for Singapore, then go straight from there to the games. Jessica Hardy, a competitor in the 100 Breast, 50 free, and 100 freestyle relay, apparently left a few days ago after receiving news that she failed a drug test taken at Trials. Now What? Technically, the cut off date for the swim team to change its Olympic roster was Monday, so the third place finishers in Hardy's events, Tara Kirk (one of my Stanford teammates) and Lara Jackson, are out of luck. There's a petition process where the USOC can go to the IOC and ask to allow in another athlete, but they may or may not use it. Probably, the spots will be filled by other athletes who are already heading to Beijing.

Tara's been in Ireland since trials, so she didn't receive word of this little snafu until sort of late in the game. How does it feel to be on vacation, in Ireland, trying to get away from it all and trying to get over the dissappointment of missing out on something you've been eating, sleeping, and breathing for four years by one one hundredth of a second, and then suddenly to get a text, or an email, telling you that you were second, actually - that your opponant was caught cheating - and that because they didn't catch her soon enough (by a couple days - that's all.) you still don't get to go to the Olympics? I can't even imagine... At least I can say "A sport's a sport, my opponents were good, It came down to the competition, and they beat me." But what does Tara say? "My opponent was using illegal drugs, but she beat me, and now it's too late..."

But then again, what about Jessica Hardy? The rumor is that she "slightly" failed one drug test sandwiched between two others, which she passed. And that the drug that she tested positive for is a stimulant used in asthma medications. So what if it was all just an accident? What do you do when you need a medication to keep you breathing, and you take it, and because it contains the barest trace amount of a substance that some group decided was performance enhancing, you're now s.o.l. for the dream YOU've worked for for the last four years. What if you competed and earned a spot in 3 different events, been drug tested after each race, and failed the drug test on your relay berth - the event in which you placed the lowest. What runs through your head then?

But what if it wasn't all just an accident? As athletes, we basically have USADA's "banned" list retold to us on a regular basis... how could you be so dumb, to let yourself take that asthma medication, even if you don't use it much, even if it only has small amounts of the drug in it?

I guess in the end I'm just thankful. Aesthetic sports like mine sometimes get a bad rap because the outcomes are decided by judges, rather than times and heights. My sport's not perfect. Yes, there can be bias, and politics, and subjectivity... but at least I don't have to worry about chemicals, and $500 suits, and state-of-the-art shoes, and all the things outside of talent and hard work that factor into other peoples' games. I'm really thankful that I don't feel the pressure to drink a special drink, or take a special pill - legal or no, the line is a fine one - to feel like I'm at the same baseline as my competitors.