DJ Spins

So here comes the day all the naysayers have been waiting for, May 19th, Trevor’s trial. It is being billed as the tell-all day; the day track takes an irreparable blow to its image. The day track officially dies in the American public sports landscape. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nothing could be more negatively spun than this and track has faced a lot of negative spin. The rhetoric has over taken the facts, and the subsequent emotion is predictable.
Let’s set the record straight. This is about Trevor Graham being on trial for pedaling steroids to a wide sweeping group of athletes. Track is not on trial Trevor is on trial. In his defense he has tried to place track on trial and plans to implicate as many in the sport as he can. It is not complicated nor is it surprising; it is the coward’s way out, which is fitting because he took the easy way in. No one should be surprised at this defense, his ship has sunk, his game is up, and now he is trying to take as many down with him as he can. What you should be surprised at is how willing the sport is to go down without a fight.
Where is the deluge of stats about the drug testing track and field has had in place for over 30 years now? Baseball did not have a comprehensive testing policy before the BALCO scandal, yet I have not seen story after story about the demise of baseball. Golf developed a testing program last year, and garnered the praise of reporters as, “the best testing policy in all of sports!” Football has no unannounced testing and no one so much as blinks an eye. Yet here the sport of track stands with international out of competition testing, unannounced testing, multiple entities that conduct these test, and accredited labs all over the world, being lambasted by some of its own. Stop the madness.
Time to grow up and participate in the professionalism of sport. We are not an amateur venture any longer and those in charge need to recognize this immediately. Where is the marketing and public relations department on this story? It has been over five years and not one positive spin has been put on this thing and it should have been. This is an easy one for the sport, we have all the parts in place, all the numbers, and all the athletes to counter balance the negative side.
Project Believe has been launched and very few know what it is. It is a drug-testing program developed to profile athletes for present and future drug testing. It will create a blood profile that can be relied upon by the testers to determine any significant changes an athlete’s chemistry. No other sport has this type of program or dedication to drug testing.
There are many steps to righting this ship. It will take a diverse media blitz to turn this thing back in the right direction. There is a need for the veterans to come out and proclaim their anti doping stance, give testimonies on how they were tested and what they went trough when they competed. The likes of Edwin Moses, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Carl Lewis, Kevin Young, Jon Drummond, Gail Devers, Jackie Joyner Kersee, etc. should be contacted and in the public's face on a constant clip. There are about four meets on national television in the U.S., not including the national championships; the USATF should have a presence in each of these events promoting the testing and positive side of it all. The networks have proven they will highlight the most dramatic, which is normally the most negative, so the sport needs to rely on itself to counteract this.
Spin is not always a negative thing or something used to hide something, in this case it is desperately needed. May19th will come and go and Trevor will be sentenced on the merits of his case. Every effort should be made to make sure that is what this case remains about. Track is not on trial, a man who cheated and abused the system is.