AIU

One in five U.S. athletes not tested before Eugene, and other nuggets

One in five U.S. athletes not tested before Eugene, and other nuggets

BUDAPEST – Americans often take a holier-than-thou position when it comes to the anti-doping system. Indeed, U.S. athletes are typically heard to say something like, we get tested more. The upshot: you can trust our results more – we’re clean. The implication: others may not be.

New data from the Athletics Integrity Unit, a deep dive of out-of-competition tests from last year’s track and field world championships in Eugene, Oregon, makes plain that Americans – and fans of the U.S. team – ought to reconsider deeply held devotion.

Time for Shelby Houlihan to come clean

Time for Shelby Houlihan to come clean

Two things ought to happen now that the Court of Arbitration for Sport has issued a technically detailed but, in the end, common-sense ruling in the matter of Shelby Houlihan, the American distance runner, banning her for four years for nandrolone — through January 2025 — while thoroughly rejecting the ridiculous burrito defense.

One, Houlihan ought to come clean.

Two, all the journalistic sheep who wanted to believe, who maybe still want to believe despite the overwhelming evidence against Houlihan, that there was no way, just no way, a white American distance runner affiliated with the Bowerman Track Club could test positive — all these people, and the readers they misled, ought to take a crash course in Doping 101 and the things people will say and do, meaning anything and everything, to avoid getting busted.

Christian Coleman v. testers, part II: what is 'reasonable'?

Christian Coleman v. testers, part II: what is 'reasonable'?

The only reasonable conclusion to reach in the matter of the world’s anti-doping testers v. Christian Coleman, the world’s fastest man across 100 meters, is that the testers are seriously pissed off that Coleman got off the first time because they, the testers, didn’t understand their very own rules and now they’re targeting him.

Could, maybe should, Coleman have been more careful? That’s a reasonable question.

But let’s get this right out of the way. Coleman is one of the bright stars of the American track and field universe. Though the missed test took place last December 9, this controversy is erupting now. To try to take Coleman out now — amid the national, indeed international, furor tied to the grief and anger that generations of black Americans have suffered at the hands of institutional systems that are unfair because they or, worse, the people in charge of them, are not reasonable — will not prove constructive. Not at all.

Indeed, this case underscores a lot of what’s fraught about the anti-doping control system.