Flashes of Panic

There was an article in the sports section of the Sunday Globe: “Healthy outlook has the sport up and running again”. Never mind the awful cliché in the headline. The whole premise of this article is flawed.

A year ago this weekend inside the Reggie Lewis Center, you would have been excused if you thought you’d wandered into a pharmacological convention. The questions were all about designer steroids then, about human growth hormones and Modafinil, about EPO and insulin and who was using them and who wasn’t.

Hogwash, sir. Were you actually there last year? I was and I don’t recall hearing a single question about designer steroids, HGH or Modafinil. Maybe that’s because I was talking to the distance runners? He’s got some decent quotes in here from seriously drug-impaired events, like the shot putters, where Saturday’s winner John Godina said, “In my event, it’s always been all about the drugs,” and third-placer Adam Nelson, whose shirt says “Space for rent” on the front, has his website, throwclean.com, on the back. (Look at those pictures. How can you not love this guy?)

But I stood next to this reporter on Saturday while he badgered Jen Toomey and Shayne Culpepper for quotes for this column. Toomey gave him a good one, which he used, and it’s true that the drug scandals did clear out an athlete who was one of the biggest figures in her event. But Culpepper didn’t really have anything to say; aside from that one individual, drugs have seldom been at the top of any distance runner’s agenda in this country.

As another track writer and I rolled our eyes at each other, this guy asked, “Is it nice that nobody’s asking about drugs this year?” And I thought, furiously, “Yeah, nobody except you…”

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