Don’t Make Exceptions To Drug-Testing Rules

It seems so easy to tell Jessica Foschi to fight like heck, to hire lawyers, to sue, to go to court, to scream and shout, to cry heartfelt tears, to do anything to win back her chance to make the 1996 U.S. Olympic swim team.

It would be easy and it would be wrong.

Foschi is the 15-year-old Olympic-caliber swimmer from Long Island who has been suspended from competing for two years because Foschi failed a drug test last year. Foschi tested positive for the steroid mesterolone last August and Foschi, her family, her lawyer and her coach are not disputing the positive test result. Foschi’s camp is arguing that the teenager was sabotaged somehow, that maybe somebody spiked a sports drink because Foschi, her mother, her father and her coach all argue, and all have passed lie detector tests according to their lawyer, that Foschi absolutely, positively does not know how the steroid got into Foschi’s system.

There is no evidence that Foschi isn’t telling the truth. At a hearing in front of the U.S. Swimming federation’s board of directors this week in Florida, sources say a doctor testified that mesterolone isn’t a steroid a swimmer would use and that the dose found in Foschi’s test was large, too large, stupidly large, uselessly large to have been taken so close to a swim meet. One member of the board said that nobody in attendance wasn’t moved by Foschi’s tearful pleas of innocence and the board met until 3 in the morning before finally announcing the two-year suspension.

After the test result last summer, U.S. Swimming first voted only to put Foschi on probation for two years. But U.S. Swimming president Carol Zaleski appealed, asking for the suspension, which would agree with international rules, instead. And the board had no choice, really, but to agree.

It has been a holy crusade for nearly two years by the United States federation, as well as by Australia and several other countries, for more stringent drug testing and stiff, inflexible punishment, in response to an unprecedented and questionable surge to world records by Chinese female swimmers. There was the belief by many American swimmers that the Chinese were using steroids, same as the East Germans two decades ago, to dominate the sport. Chinese swimmers were banned from some international meets and, indeed, many of the Chinese swimmers who set the world records, have suddenly disappeared. Some of these Chinese swimmers, teenagers like Foschi, said that if they had taken steroids, it wasn’t with their knowledge. These swimmers said they only took what their coaches gave them. Which might also have been absolutely true.

It is our way in the United States to believe that you are innocent until proven guilty. That is certainly the argument the Foschis will make as they almost certainly appeal this ruling, appeal it past the stage of U.S. Swimmming and into U.S. courts, which is also the American way, to sue until you get what you want, or feel you deserve.

And it is our way to rail against injustice, unfairness. It would be terribly unfair if Foschi had been sabotaged, maybe by someone who was tired of the American self-righteousness over drug testing. Olympic-caliber athletes spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to train. Foschi certainly has given up a normal life, been up before dawn, dropped to sleep exhausted. She has invested her strength, her emotions, her life to this sport.

But here’s the thing. FINA, the international governing body for swimming, says that a positive drug test means two years of suspension. It is impossible to advocate strict drug testing, then say, “except if it’s an American teenager who says she doesn’t know how she got the drug.”

What would we say if a Chinese world-record holder who had come from nowhere, wins a gold medal at the Olympics in Atlanta, tests positive afterwards, and then tells us, with tears in her eyes, that she doesn’t know where the drug came from, that someone must have sabotaged her, spiked her drink or something? What would the American swimmers say?

Don Gambril, who is chairman of the NCAA swimming rules committee and who was coach of the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, said after the hearing in Florida that, “I think you either voted to follow the rules or you voted on emotion. If it had been an emotional vote, it would have been 14-0, because I don’t think anybody in that room believed she knowingly took that drug or that her family or her coach gave it to her. But the rules say any positive test requires a suspension.”

Exactly.

And even if Foschi ingested the steroid unknowingly, she still bears some responsibility. Aren’t you responsible for what you drink or eat? If Foschi drank from a bottle that wasn’t hers, or had been left unattended, then that was unbearably stupid. It is a hard way to learn a lesson, but one international swimming official had an apt analogy. The official pointed out that, when you travel, you are responsible for what is in your luggage. If illegal drugs are found in your luggage, even if you didn’t put the drugs in your luggage, even if you don’t know who did put the drugs in, you are responsible.

Foschi was responsible for what went into her body. If the U.S. swimmers, or anybody else, hopes for a clean and fair competition in Atlanta this summer, there was only one decision to be made. And it was made.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diane Pucin Philadelphia Inquirer