COMMENTARY : Are Track Officials to Blame for Mess?

Sport as theater is not an original concept. Well before the days of the gladiators, it was clear to some that there was profit to be made from organized and orchestrated struggle.

Some lessons of history have not been lost. Take, for example, recent developments in track and field. What we see is a sport seemingly shot through with corruption and greed, drugs and cheating. What we see are task forces, inquiries and congressional hearings.

What we don’t see are the behind-the-scenes machinations that make the theater possible. The unseen hand in all of this is attached--palm up--to the arm of administrators and officials who run amateur sport for their professional profit.

Take The Athletics Congress, for example. Here is a group that has claimed the moral high ground on the drug issue. However, with TAC, there is often a discrepancy between word and deed.

While the Canadians were conducting a comprehensive and incisive inquiry into drug use among their athletes, TAC, which governs track and field in this country, has watched from the sidelines and criticized what it called unfounded attacks on American athletes.

“Put up or shut up,” TAC has said. “Prove it or move it.”

Yet, when TAC was confronted with proof--as provided by its own drug-testing program--that two athletes had used testosterone before the national indoor meet, it let the athletes off the hook, saying that the evidence was inconclusive. Does this mean we are to question all tests conducted by TAC, since the methodology is identical in each case?

What a strong, clear message to send to American athletes. What a way to boost confidence in TAC’s drug-testing program.

And what message did TAC send out with it’s back-room deal that let Chuck DeBus, a former coach, make like Pete Rose and accept punishment for something he says he did not do?

DeBus has, for years, lived with accusations that he supplied drugs to his athletes. He has consistently denied these allegations. TAC has consistently ignored them.

It became difficult to ignore, though, when sprinter Diane Williams testified before the Senate Judicary Committee and said into a microphone what everyone in the sport had been gossiping about for years.

TAC began an investigation and named a hearing panel, promising to get to the bottom of everything. This is a sport with zero tolerance for drugs or those who would advocate their use. Put up or shut up, remember?

Six months passed. The first hearing was rescheduled. The second was canceled after a deal was struck, in a manner that was outside TAC’s own bylaws. Business as usual at TAC.

TAC says it has punished DeBus by barring him from the sport for two years. Yet DeBus has been inactive as a track coach for years. Guess that really hurt, then, to be kicked out. Ouch, TAC.

DeBus’ attorney said his client is fully vindicated, since an aspect of the deal is that he never admitted to any wrongdoing. Perhaps. But wouldn’t true vindication have resulted in meeting the accusers face to face in a public hearing and having the opportunity to at last respond?

All parties involved would have us believe that there was no side-deal, no exchange of information. Don’t believe it. To the people who run amateur sport, quid pro quo is standard operating procedure. TAC got something from DeBus and you can be sure that it was filed away to be used at the appropriate moment for maximum advantage. In some other deal.

As if there aren’t enough crummy people to accuse of crummy things already active within the sport, Stern magazine this week had to drag Florence Griffith Joyner--who is trying to be retired from track and its sleaze--into the middle of a tempest of its own construction. Again with the unseen hand.

Stern went shopping in what used to be called the marketplace of ideas and found it full to bursting with people willing to sell their scandals. Receptionists with pilfered documents, nurses with photocopied prescriptions. Confession as commodity.

They settled on Darrell Robinson, an American 400-meter runner. Robinson was paid by the magazine for his story, a practice that is not uncommon with some European publications. One of the things Robinson told Stern is that he sold human growth hormone to Griffith Joyner for $2,000. Griffith Joyner, who has heard accusations of this nature before, told The Times Wednesday that Robinson was quite mistaken. She said she would pray for him.

Her mood apparently made a swing sometime later, for when Griffith Joyner appeared Thursday morning on “The Today Show,” she said to Robinson, “You are a compulsive, crazy, lying lunatic.”

The interview, which host Bryant Gumbel conducted with Florence and husband Al Joyner in the New York studio and Robinson in a Toronto studio, was wonderful television. Gumbel was rendered more referee than newsman as Griffith Joyner grew ever more annoyed at Robinson.

It began like this:

Flo Jo: Hello, Darrell. . . . How can you have the nerve to get in front of all these people and tell a false lie? How can you say that I bought human growth hormone from you? Are you crazy, Darrell? What date? Be specific? Would I be that stupid?

This went on for some minutes before Gumbel interjected, “Let me jump in here for just a minute . . . “

Flo Jo: Why didn’t you come here Darrell? I came here 2,000 miles from Los Angeles. I’ve been on a plane all night just to see you face to face. I can’t believe that you are hiding out. You did not be man enough to face me.

Robinson: I missed my flight.

Flo Jo: You didn’t miss nothing.

Al Joyner: Are you willing to say this to the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service? You quoted a $100,000 (payment from Stern). Did you pay your income taxes? Did you report this.

Gumbel: Let me jump in here for just a second . . .

Flo Jo: What about you, Darrell? How come you didn’t set a major world record if you’re accusing people of setting world records having to be on steroids?

Robinson: What people fail to realize is that just because you are on steroids doesn’t mean you are going to have success. I’ve had some success and I’ve had some failures . . .

Flo Jo: You’ve always been a failure because you’ve taken drugs. So don’t tell me about success. You know nothing about that.

Al: You are a lying, compulsive guy and you know it.

(Gumbel then asked Griffith Joyner if she were surprised that the accusations keep coming.)

Flo Jo: No, you are always going to have a crazy lunatic like Darrell Robinson out there . . .

Al: We’re suing.

Robinson: Fine, let’s take it public.

Gumbel: I’m going to have to call a halt . . .

By the way, NBC paid Stern for the story, which amounted to the magazine making Robinson available for the interview. Of course, the network also paid for Griffith Joyner and her husband to fly to New York. You can imagine that the international publicity generated by the Stern story will also serve to boost the market for more information.

How to control this madness? Start at the top. Integrity is a foreign notion to many officials who are profiting from the sweat of athletes in the sport. There are television fees to be collected, there are sanctioning fees to be charged. There are kickbacks for travel.

Why should athletes consider abiding by the rules in a sport whose leaders break the rules regularly? It is another lesson of history: Those who are the embodiment of the law are also above it.

This is a sport whose international governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, is directed by a man who has exercised, at best, questionable judgment.

Consider: The 1987 World Championships were held in Rome. The meet promoter was Primo Nebiolo. The head of the Italian track federation is Primo Nebiolo. The head of the IAAF is Primo Nebiolo.

Now think of drug testing. Why would the meet promoter, who has a financial stake in the success of the competition, want to see his party tainted by drug positives?

Think of fair competition. Remember the men’s long jump, where an investigation revealed that Italian officials had changed the marks so that an Italian jumper would place third? Who orchestrated that incident? Ask Primo Nebiolo.

This was the meet in which Ben Johnson set a world record. He passed the drug test, or at least was not cited as a positive.

Years later, he admits he was on drugs at the time. What do the IAAF, and Nebiolo, do? They take away Johnson’s record because he says he was on drugs. No due process. No discussion of what went wrong with the testing that allowed Johnson to slip through.

The next time sports officials puzzle over the corrupt behavior of athletes, remind them to look to themselves. The moral standards in sport are set, and lowered by them. Scandals make for great theater, but lousy administration.

Let accountability begin at the top.