Dopers are ugly, but they're not as bad as the real criminals

Let's get one thing straight: Dopers are slime. Manipulative, conniving cheats, they betray trust and piss on the tireless work of others.

But dopers are not armed robbers. Or rapists. Or white-collar rattlesnakes like Ken Lay.

It's time the Italian government stopped treating them like criminals. If not forever, at least for the upcoming Turin Olympics.

With every day that passes, we get closer to an improbable scenario: Olympic athletes being led away in handcuffs and thrown in jail because they got caught for taking something they shouldn't have.

Italy's government has had criminal laws against doping for quite some time. It's not the only nation that treats athletics-related drug offenses thusly. But it is the only one hosting the pinnacle of sport in February.

When Italian organizers signed the International Olympic Committee's host city contract in 1999, they accepted the IOC's rules, which include treating doping as a sports infraction but not a crime. However, now Italy's government leaders appear firmly committed to maintaining their current criminal laws. They have said time and again that they will not consider a moratorium during the Olympics.

This is a silly bit of stinginess. It's one thing to enforce the laws at your nation's sporting events, as Italy did by handing out six-month suspended jail sentences to three cyclists who were caught doping in the 2001 Giro d'Italia. But the Olympics couldn't be more different. And they deserve to be treated as such by the host nation.

Trust me, I am not advocating for soft consideration of dopers. The damn cheats should pay for their actions and live with the ensuing humiliation. Still, they shouldn't go to jail. Jail is for the true criminals, not the cheaters. It doesn't matter how big the stage is.

The difference in consequences has to do with an athlete's freedom, for one. Forfeiting your right to liberty is a big deal. Sports doping is far more serious than a catch-me-if-you-can offense like putting Vaseline on a baseball, but neither equates to freedom.

The second reason dopers shouldn't be jailed is the simple fact that drug tests aren't always correct. At the 2004 Athens Olympics a Colombian cyclist, Maria Luisa Calle, lost her bronze medal because the IOC's drug test indicated she had ingested the banned substance heptaminol. It wasn't until more than a year had passed that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned the IOC's decision and restored Calle's medal.

It took this explanation from the CAS to finally clear her: "The parties agreed that the presence of heptaminol in the appellant's urine sample was not due to the appellant having ingested that substance but was the result of the ingestion of neo-saldina containing isometheptene, a substance which transforms into heptaminol during laboratory analyses."

During the year between the Athens games and the CAS's overturning the IOC's test findings, you can bet Calle endured more undue criticism and embarrassment than Coke would wish on Pepsi. Now imagine if she also had been thrown in jail.

The clock is ticking on Turin.



Devon O'Neil can be contacted at (970) 668-3998, ext. 13630, or at doneil@summitdaily.com.