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Bolt provokes celebration <span style="font-weight: bold">and suspicion</span>
STEPHEN BRUNT
Last updated on Friday, Aug. 21, 2009 03:56AM EDT
[email protected]
It's a fair bet this week that the planet is divided in two while digesting the implications of Usain Bolt's miracle sprint.
On one side are those who revelled in the accomplishment of someone running 100 metres in 9.58 seconds (he competes in the 200-metre final at the world championships today), Bolt's magnetic personality, the obvious joy he takes in competing and a body that sure doesn't look like one of those built-by-science specimens that are the norm in his sport.
And on the other side are those waiting for the positive drug test.
There's the bind we're in, and there's the bind we will be in forever more. The desire to celebrate a pure sporting moment, to embrace a shining star who has rightly become a national hero in his native land, is at war with the cynicism bred over the past 20-plus years.
The former is part of the core attraction of spectator sport - what draws us back no matter what the history and the emotional kick that separates it from empty spectacle. The latter is an entirely rational response to the knowledge that doping remains widespread, largely undetectable and undeniably effective, and to the impossibility of proving a negative. Bolt says he's clean. They all say they're clean.
Nothing turned up in his sample? They never caught Marion Jones, either, at least not in a lab.
Though it is a lively subject of debate in the news media and among opportunistic politicians, in most cases consumers of sport as entertainment have quietly made their peace with drug use, or at least have opted to suspend their disbelief. There is no real evidence of a ticket-buyer or television-viewer backlash, whether it's major-league baseball, the NFL, the Tour de France or the Olympics.
If there were, sponsors would be pulling out en masse and commissioners, presidents and players' unions would be pushing for even more draconian testing regimes, terrified that the golden goose was on its last legs.
That fans can welcome back Manny Ramirez with open arms or accept that an NFL doping infraction merits only a four-game suspension suggests that those who keep right on watching are in it for the diversion, for the sense of communal belonging and commitment, and not for a perpetual morality play.
The CFL has no drug testing program at all and the NFL was awfully late to the dance and has anyone even noticed?
Many more people will say they care deeply about the ethics of doping, that cheaters should never prosper, than have actually turned their back even on the sports where we know for certain drug use is prevalent.
Where it gets especially tricky, though, where it is far more difficult to equate athletes using performance-enhancing substances with movie stars undergoing plastic surgery, is when it comes to history and to sign posts, when human potential itself seems in the process of being redefined.
How many home runs can someone hit in a 162-game baseball season?
Well, it depends ...
How much weight can a person lift above his or her head?
Well, it depends ...
How fast can someone cover the standard distance used to measure short-term speed, the most elemental contest there is?
Well, it depends. In Seoul, Ben Johnson did it in 9.79 seconds against a field that we now know was every bit as dirty as he was, but circumstances dictated that his number be stricken from the books.
His time, in 1988, was every bit as mind-blowing as Bolt's is now. And it's surely headed even lower.
Learned folks would have argued not so long ago that it simply wasn't possible, that human physiology had its limits, that the 100-metre mark might drop by a hundredth of a second here or there over the course of decades, but never, ever like this. Turns out they were wrong.
New training techniques, perhaps.
New sophistication in the sports sciences, an unprecedented degree of dedication or perhaps simply a one-off, once-in-a-lifetime athlete put together like no other human before him.
It would be a grand thing to be able to believe that unequivocally, to feel it absolutely.
But innocence lost isn't so easily regained.
STEPHEN BRUNT
Last updated on Friday, Aug. 21, 2009 03:56AM EDT
[email protected]
It's a fair bet this week that the planet is divided in two while digesting the implications of Usain Bolt's miracle sprint.
On one side are those who revelled in the accomplishment of someone running 100 metres in 9.58 seconds (he competes in the 200-metre final at the world championships today), Bolt's magnetic personality, the obvious joy he takes in competing and a body that sure doesn't look like one of those built-by-science specimens that are the norm in his sport.
And on the other side are those waiting for the positive drug test.
There's the bind we're in, and there's the bind we will be in forever more. The desire to celebrate a pure sporting moment, to embrace a shining star who has rightly become a national hero in his native land, is at war with the cynicism bred over the past 20-plus years.
The former is part of the core attraction of spectator sport - what draws us back no matter what the history and the emotional kick that separates it from empty spectacle. The latter is an entirely rational response to the knowledge that doping remains widespread, largely undetectable and undeniably effective, and to the impossibility of proving a negative. Bolt says he's clean. They all say they're clean.
Nothing turned up in his sample? They never caught Marion Jones, either, at least not in a lab.
Though it is a lively subject of debate in the news media and among opportunistic politicians, in most cases consumers of sport as entertainment have quietly made their peace with drug use, or at least have opted to suspend their disbelief. There is no real evidence of a ticket-buyer or television-viewer backlash, whether it's major-league baseball, the NFL, the Tour de France or the Olympics.
If there were, sponsors would be pulling out en masse and commissioners, presidents and players' unions would be pushing for even more draconian testing regimes, terrified that the golden goose was on its last legs.
That fans can welcome back Manny Ramirez with open arms or accept that an NFL doping infraction merits only a four-game suspension suggests that those who keep right on watching are in it for the diversion, for the sense of communal belonging and commitment, and not for a perpetual morality play.
The CFL has no drug testing program at all and the NFL was awfully late to the dance and has anyone even noticed?
Many more people will say they care deeply about the ethics of doping, that cheaters should never prosper, than have actually turned their back even on the sports where we know for certain drug use is prevalent.
Where it gets especially tricky, though, where it is far more difficult to equate athletes using performance-enhancing substances with movie stars undergoing plastic surgery, is when it comes to history and to sign posts, when human potential itself seems in the process of being redefined.
How many home runs can someone hit in a 162-game baseball season?
Well, it depends ...
How much weight can a person lift above his or her head?
Well, it depends ...
How fast can someone cover the standard distance used to measure short-term speed, the most elemental contest there is?
Well, it depends. In Seoul, Ben Johnson did it in 9.79 seconds against a field that we now know was every bit as dirty as he was, but circumstances dictated that his number be stricken from the books.
His time, in 1988, was every bit as mind-blowing as Bolt's is now. And it's surely headed even lower.
Learned folks would have argued not so long ago that it simply wasn't possible, that human physiology had its limits, that the 100-metre mark might drop by a hundredth of a second here or there over the course of decades, but never, ever like this. Turns out they were wrong.
New training techniques, perhaps.
New sophistication in the sports sciences, an unprecedented degree of dedication or perhaps simply a one-off, once-in-a-lifetime athlete put together like no other human before him.
It would be a grand thing to be able to believe that unequivocally, to feel it absolutely.
But innocence lost isn't so easily regained.
Do they not know that Bolt is the most tested athlete today? Surely he would have been found out lang time.
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