Doping Cases: Merely Maintaining the Credibility of the Spectacle?

[WSJ_law_blog]

Fani Chalkia from Greece tested positive for the banned steriod Methyltrienolone (AP Photo/ Czarek Sokolowski )

With a host of Olympians having tested positive for drugs, we turn our attention back to Beijing. Today’s question: Do athletes have a fair shot at defending themselves against doping charges? No is the short answer, lawyers say.

Yesterday, the International Olympic Committee announced that a Greek hurdler, Fani Chalkia, tested positive for the banned steriod Methyltrienolone. This follows a Korean shooter who failed two doping tests and will have to return a silver and a bronze medal, and a Vietnamese gymnast who tested positive. Taking a particularly aggressive stance this year against doping, the IOC will conduct 4,500 blood and urine tests, the most in Olympic history.

Here’s how the process works: If athletes test positive, they must appear within 24 hours at an IOC disciplinary hearing. (Failing to show up for tests can also lead to disqualification.) Athletes can request a delay of the hearing, but the IOC need not grant it. If the IOC assesses a penalty, athletes can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sports, a Swiss body which runs on-site arbitrations. By rule, the group must resolve most appeals within 24 hours.

“There is no doubt you don’t give athletes full due process” at the Olympics, says Jonathan Taylor, a London lawyer who prosecutes doping cases on behalf of the International Tennis Federation. But, he says, “you have to maintain the credibility of the spectacle, so you need to deal quickly with any investigation of doping.”

“If you get a positive test, you have already lost,” says Zach Lund, a U.S. athlete in the sport of skeleton (head-forward luge, a winter sport) who found out on the eve of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin that he had tested positive for Finasteride, an agent that masks steroids but is also found in Propecia ─ a hair loss medication Lund used. An arbitration panel determined that he was an “honest athlete” but banned him from the games and sanctioned him for one year.

Added to the condensed time frame is the complexity of simply getting to China.

Howard Jacobs, perhaps the premier doping defense lawyer in the U.S., says he has a Chinese visa at the ready, yet he concedes that he can not likely make it to Beijing in time to help any athlete who seeks his counsel.

The U.S. Olympic Committee has some of its own staff lawyers on hand and has retained independent Beijing lawyers to advise athletes. “Our legal team will make certain that the rights of an athlete are preserved and due process is followed,” Darryl Seibel, a USOC spokesman, says.