Flashes of Panic

The race was over by the mile mark. Leghzaoui, the one returning from the doping ban, stomped on the gas just after the kilometer mark and was substantially clear of the field by the mile mark. As a simplification, let’s say she runs like a boy; by that, I mean that she has a long stride, not the chopped shuffle that many women run with. With her tiny build and relatively long legs, that makes her a middle-distance oxygen-burning machine; it’s no surprise she’s got speed, or that she rolls on the downhills like a runaway kickball. Her husband was there, running sometimes along the sidewalk shouting encouragement while the USATF officials scowled from the the truck beside me. She broke the course record.

I watched, I took a slew of photos, some of which may actually be usable. I got sunburned. I didn’t push through the mob of TV cameras and reporters at the finish to get quotes, translated by her husband. I did talk to the masters winner.

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post earlier this week about Leghzaoui, a much more balanced story than the one in Runner’s World on Monday. It reversed the spin, and made the athletes who withdrew look like whiners. Leghzaoui came out looking like, well, an innocent who made a mistake. True enough, but I can’t honestly believe she didn’t know she was doing something wrong when the needle went in.

So it’s spin on both sides, and what’s missing is that doping rules in the sport, so far, are largely about trust. You aren’t required to pass a doping test to enter a race; you pass it afterward, because the race organizer is trusting you to pass it. I’ve noticed that the races Legzhaoui is running are not the races she ran a few years ago. The races that trusted her aren’t the ones she’s running this year. Their trust was bruised. It’s that simple.

Update, 6/6: The Albany Times Union gets it too. Their column includes this analysis: “…Yet we don’t know what we saw. Did we see greatness or a great swindle?”