Reactions: Sports in shambles over Landis, Gatlin doping cases

By John Bagratuni Jul 31, 2006, 14:06 GMT

Hamburg - Some turned to sarcasm, others to Shakespeare.

'Next up on the doping docket: Santa Claus tests positive for steroids ... How is he able to visit all those houses all over the world, unless he's juiced?' wondered the Los Angeles Times.

The suggestion may sound a little provocative, but the doping cases of Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin seem to indicate that nothing seems impossible in the world of sport when it comes to illegal practice.

French sports daily L'Equipe resorted to Shakespeare's Hamlet when it said Monday: 'Something is rotten in the kingdom of performance.'

The 'kingdom' in these particular cases is the US - as the Tour de France winner Landis and the 100 metres world record co-owner, world and Olympic champion Gatlin both hail from that country.

'You could say that these are the biggest blow professional sport ever had to swallow,' said L'Equipe.

But the duo, whose positive tests for testosterone were announced within 48 hours Thursday and Saturday, doesn't stand alone.

The year 2006 alone has seen doping raids by Italian authorities on the Austrian team during the Turin Olympics and a Spanish probe into a doctor and his cyclist clients - leading to the suspension of stars like Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso ahead of the Tour de France.

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wondered: 'In all seriousness: Should one, or can one, or is one allowed to report on something like this on the sports pages?'

The FAZ was referring to the claim of Gatlin's coach Trevor Graham that 'a masseuse with a grudge' (LA Times) rubbed testosterone cream on the world and Olympic champion ahead of the positive test and that a private eye was investigating.

The list of denials is as long as that of doping offenders in sport. German runner Dieter Baumann once blamed toothpaste spiked with nandrolone and American runner Dennis Mitchell said 'a sixpack and sex' were responsible for his positive test.

Many publications spoke of an unholy alliance of doctors, officials, coaches and athletes which could only be dealt with by the full force of criminal law - a call made by cycling officials to world anti-doping supremo Dick Pound and already executed in countries like France, Spain and Italy.

'You must become familiar with the idea that it is too late, that the Doctor Mabuses of all kinds have won the game and that you can't get the magicians' apprentices off the winners podium again,' said L'Equipe.

Italy's Il Giornale struck a similar line when it said: 'Tear down the mask of sport in the third millennium.' And Il Messaggero Veneto lamented: 'Poor sport, it's all doping.'

The retired 200m and 400m world record holder Michael Johnson said in a column for the Daily Telegraph Monday that only tough action can rid the sport of doping, such as banning coaches like Graham whose athletes have been caught for doping in the past.

'Unfortunately there is no rule in place to deal with coaches like Graham. And until there is, we might continue to see athletes cheating and damaging the sport,' Johnson said.

The Daily Telegraph spoke of a vicious circle in athletics where top results were needed in principle at a time of dwindling interest from fans, sponsors and television.

French daily Le Figaro said that the doping mess was only a reflection of society.

'These super humans are the refections of our exaggerations in a society in which the race for performance triumphs. It will probably take other Landis affairs, other Gatlin scandals to realise that sport ... is a spectacle at worst. But it mainly is a fraud,' said Le Figaro.

In this respect even Ben Johnson - a former Canadian sprinter whose loss of the 100m gold at the 1988 Olympics for steroid abuse is still considered the biggest doping scandal of all - is right.

'The spectators don't care, the sponsors probably don't care. All they want to see is the world's fastest man,' Johnson told the BBC.