The best thing Rhasidat Adeleke could have done after finishing fourth in the Olympics was to get back on the track as soon as possible, and even if the result was the same at the Diamond League meeting in Poland last Sunday, the mood felt a little different this time.
Most of us were perfectly aware before the Olympics that Salwa Eid Naser, the 26-year-old running for Bahrain who won the World Championship 400 metres in 2019, was previously banned for two years in June 2021 for an anti-doping violation, missing three tests within a 12-month period, also known as the whereabouts rule.
What we didn’t know, until last Thursday, was that the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) had issued a notice of charge against the Bahrain Athletics Association (BAA) for “serious anti-doping rule violations” and “historical breaches of the World Athletics anti-doping rules”, after an 18-month investigation, which concluded in December of last year.
Whatever about the rights or wrongs of Naser being free to compete in Paris, winning the silver medal in a season best of 48.53, as Adeleke finished fourth, the AIU investigation into Bahrain appears to raise more questions than answers.
The Legend of Sparrow Robertson: The last sportswriter in Nazi Paris
‘Helping him in his darkest moment was also helping me’: David Eccles and Tadhg Kennelly on an act of friendship that spawned a movement
Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year Awards: ‘The greatest collection of women in Irish sport in one place ever assembled’
Two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington named Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman of the Year 2024
Naser finished second again on Sunday, still free to compete, and despite the best intentions of the AIU, it appears there are still many loopholes that athletes and their representatives can find to escape longer bans that would prevent them from returning to the sport.
There is a sense as well that some athletes who do cheat are perhaps being protected more than the clean athletes who are doing everything right. Even when you’re talking about athletes returning from doping bans, you’re sometimes doing the same thing, afraid to really point the finger, thinking maybe we don’t always know the full truth.
Any time there is a question around missed tests, athletes will always come up with different answers, and some of them can be plausible. Because any athlete who misses three tests, whether deliberately or not, are going to try to get off. So you try to come up with the most plausible reason, or excuse, that people will buy.
The fact there’s only a two-year ban for missed tests, compared to four years for a positive test, also raises some questions. I can see where they were coming from on that, because some athletes may genuinely miss three tests, and to slap a four-year ban on them would be harsh.
But I see it with my daughter Sophie, who might be a little disorganised around some things, but she’s very, very careful on the whereabouts rule. Even on Wednesday, we were driving from Cobh to Limerick, and she was straight away dealing with it, updating her whereabouts. It’s just one of those things you can’t forget. She just knows she can’t get this wrong.
And if you’re a world champion like Naser, and had already missed some tests, you’d imagine you’d be extra careful again.
It can’t have been easy for Adeleke to line up against Naser again last Sunday. The Dubliner pointed out on Tuesday that there needed to be more “lifelong consequences” for athletes and countries in breach of serious anti-doping violations.
Going back to when I finished fourth in my first Olympics, in the 3,000m in Barcelona in 1992, there were always some whispers about the Russian athletes, and the former East Germans, who seemed to have an advantage over everyone else. It just wasn’t something we openly spoke about, although they weren’t respected as much as others.
My attitude was the best way to deal with that question was to go out and beat them. Athletes like Tetyana Dorovskikh-Samolenko, who won the 3,000m gold medal for Russia, in Seoul in 1988, and the 1,500m and 3,000m double at 1987 World Championships, and who also won a silver medal in Barcelona ahead of me.
After Barcelona, my attitude was I’ll go out to beat Dorovskikh next time, which I did. Then in June 1993, she tested positive for steroids, although got to keep her Olympic silver medal. You look back now, it must have been so easy for athletes to get away with things.
But you could only focus on what you were doing. It was like what Colin Jackson used to say, that he’d one less thing to worry about on the start line, because he wasn’t worried about being tested, in that he was doing nothing wrong.
But even if there was to be any retrospective findings or further sanctions from Paris, like we have so often seen in the past, that moment of glory is lost. A medal in the post will never have the same gratification as that lost moment would have had.
When you see the sanctions set forward for Bahrain and the requirements to set up proper anti-doping testing protocols, you also have to wonder why they are getting this special treatment now, when so many countries have been rigorously testing their athletes for decades.
The other question is why this investigation into Bahrain was only made known after the Olympics, when it was concluded last December. And who came up with only 10 athletes being allowed to compete for Bahrain, when they didn’t even have 10 athletes in Paris, they only had eight?
You also look at the amount of money that is spent on global anti-doping, it’s probably more than is spent on prize money. Sport Ireland spent €2.44 million on anti-doping, roughly similar to how much is invested in Irish athletics. So it’s as if we are spending the same amount trying to catch people doping as we are trying to make people better.
If all that money wasn’t spent in Irish anti-doping, would more Irish athletes be cheating? I don’t think so, because we’ve only had a few cases over the years, and there were obvious ones, when athletes were suspected. The testers went straight after them and caught them.
There is no doubt Naser was not alone and there were most likely other athletes competing in Paris who were returning from suspensions to take their place on the start line, without any guilt or conscience stopping them.
The AIU have done a lot of good work before the Olympics. Even if you look at Kenya, where we know there’s been a lot of athletes caught by the AIU over the last year or so, the performances were definitely toned down a little in Paris. And with Ethiopia too.
Still, for all that progress that the AIU has achieved since its inception in 2017, there are some loopholes in the system that somehow leave the door open for athletes to take a risk. And especially in some countries where the rewards are still greater than that risk.
I do believe that we are getting closer to closing those loopholes and achieving a sport in which we can have more faith and belief than ever before. Only for Adeleke, the sanctions on Bahrain may all have come a little too late and made the path a little smoother for Naser to run in Paris.
