Aussies should know not to expect any leniency if Brenton Rickard’s appeal to clear his name fails
The penalties for blameless Olympians whose teammates get busted are so severe that even the great Usain Bolt lost an Olympic gold medal through no fault of his own.
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Brenton Rickard’s rueful promise to his teammates that he will do everything he can to save them from being stripped of their 2012 Olympic medley relay medals because of his positive doping test is admirable, but isn’t likely to help them.
Plenty of innocent athletes have lost their medals because of cheating teammates – including Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt and American track and field legend Michael Johnson – so the Aussies should know not to expect any leniency if Rickard’s appeal to clear his name fails.
Through no fault of their own – James Magnussen, Christian Sprenger, Hayden Stoeckel, Matt Targett and Tommaso D’Orsogna – all face losing the bronze medals they earned for finishing third in the men’s medley relay.
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There have been cases of Olympians who have been allowed to keep their medals after a teammate was disqualified for doping but the rules are decided by the individual sporting federations, not the International Olympic Committee.
And that spells bad news for the Australians because swimming’s world governing body FINA employs some of the toughest regulations, which are clearly spelled out in its Doping Control Rules.
“Where any Anti-Doping Rule has been violated by a member of a relay in swimming, or team in open water swimming, or a duet or team in artistic swimming or diving, the relay, duet or team shall be Disqualified from the Competition, with all resulting Consequences including forfeiture of any medals, points and prizes.”
No Australian has ever been stripped of an Olympic medal so this is a brutal penalty for the innocent swimmers, particularly D’Orsogna.
All of the other team members, including Rickard, won other Olympic medals that they will be allowed to keep but the medley relay bronze was D’Orsogna’s only medal he won at the Olympics.
It will come as little consolation for any of the Australians if they lose their medals, but they will find themselves in good company.
The great Bolt won nine gold medals in his career but had to hand one back after Nesta Carter – one of his teammates in the 4x100m relay at the 2008 Beijing Olympics – failed a drugs test.
In 2008, Johnson lost one of his five gold medals after Antonio Pettigrew – one of teammate’s in the 4x400m at the Sydney 2000 Olympics – admitted to doping.
The US track and field team that won the silver medal in the 4x100m at London – including Justin Gatlin – all lost their medals after Tyson Gay was busted for cheating.
There have been dozens of other cases of team members paying the ultimate price for doing nothing wrong.
In 1968, all four members of the Swedish modern pentathlon team were stripped of their bronze medals because Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall drank two beers before the pistol shooting contest to calm his nerves.
The Chinese women’s gymnastics team that won bronze at the Sydney Olympics was disqualified a decade later after it was discovered that one of their competitors, Dong Fangxiao, was too young to compete and had lied about her age.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Germany was stripped of the gold medal it won in the team equestrian event when Ludger Beerbaum’s horse ‘Goldfever’ tested positive to banned substances.
However, under equestrian’s rules, the other members of the German team were awarded the bronze medal after their results were counted without their teammate’s – which is typical of the confusion and inconsistency in different sports.
Marion Jones’ teammates that won the bronze medal in the women’s 4x100m relay at the Sydney Olympics won an appeal to keep their medals after the disgraced American sprint queen admitted to using steroids and was stripped of all her medals.
Johnson also succeeded in initially getting back his gold medal after one of his teammates Jerome Young tested positive.
But Johnson had to hand it back again after a second teammate confessed to cheating. Pettigrew later took his own life.
Too many cheats have gotten away
Australia, more than any other country, should be applauding the news that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is now regularly catching athletes that test positive to banned drugs long after their competitions have ended.
The only shameful tragedy is that the sophisticated anti-doping systems that are now in place were not introduced years earlier because far too many clean Australian athletes were robbed of medals they deserved by doped up competitors.
It’s now almost half a century since Aussie sprint legend Raelene Boyle was a victim of one the filthiest crimes in Olympic history. She won silver medals in the 100m and 200m sprints at the 1972 Munich Olympics but should have won double gold.
The woman who finished ahead of her, Renate Stecher, was one of the poster girls for the East German regime that doped its athletes to the eyeballs but escaped the noose because the testing procedures in place at the time couldn’t detect all the steroids in her body.
Irrefutable proof of East Germany’s callous doping system was laid bare to the whole world when the secret police files were opened after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - but because the statute of limitations has passed, Boyle and so many other victims are still waiting for justice.
As jarring as the revelations of Brenton Rickard’s failed test from the 2012 London Olympics seem - and regardless of whether he is ultimately found guilty or innocent - the mere fact that positive test results are being discovered more than eight years down the track is proof that Olympic officials are getting serious about catching the crooks.
Under the new anti-doping programs that were introduced after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, urine samples are now frozen and stored then reanalysed using the latest available technology, which Rickard himself acknowledged in the email he sent to his teammates, writing: “the reality is that the precision of testing has become so good it has now exceeded the quality control measures for over-the-counter medications.”
The new testing procedures are the game changer that everyone who believes in clean sport should be doing backflips over - and Australia has already reaped the benefits.
Almost 150 athletes from the London Olympics alone have now tested positive to banned substances - with more than 60 of them coming directly from samples that have been reanalysed.
Around one third of all the athletes who have been caught have been Russian, including Sergey Kirdyapkin, who cheated his way to victory in the 50km men’s walk, finishing ahead of Australia’s Jared Tallent.
The disgraced Kirdyapkin subsequently tested positive and was disqualified and although it took four years, Tallent was eventually awarded the gold medal he always deserved, receiving it from Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates at a ceremony on the steps of the Melbourne Treasury.
Statistically, London ranks as the dirtiest Olympics of all time, with 13 gold medals already reallocated, but the reanalysing of samples from Rio hasn’t even started yet because under anti-doping rules, officials have a 10-year window.
The message to athletes who break the rules could not be any blunter though - if they don’t get caught the first time, they’ll get nabbed in the future.