Have Asafa and Sherone doped or were they duped?

By Orville Higgins

Like most Jamaicans who are into sports, I am following the cases with Sherone Simpson and Asafa Powell, eager to hear the verdicts.

In Jamaica, people are entitled to the presumption of innocence until a judge or jury pronounces them guilty. It's a little different when an athlete is found with banned substances in their system. Now the athletes, in this case Asafa and Sherone, are essentially considered guilty, and will now have to convince those that matter why they should not be given the maximum two-year ban for first offenders.

The prima facie evidence, the way I see it, means that Asafa and Sherone will have their work cut out. I'm not pronouncing guilt; I'm just saying that these two will not have an easy job convincing a panel that they should get off scot-free, or with a public warning.

Here is the story as I understand it. Two athletes have been training with a coach for years. In this case, Stephen Francis. In all the time they were with him, they were NEVER implicated in any way as far as banned substances were concerned. Both had success with Stephen Francis, and clearly, his training regime, plus whatever supplements they had taken, had got them to be household names in track and field.

Now, for some reason, a new man enters the picture, and not long after, these two started taking supplements that they had not taken before, both claiming that the supplements were given to them by this new man - Chris Xuereb. I have heard others questioning Xuereb's past. I won't go there, but like a lot of people, I do wonder whether the athletes and their handlers had done the kind of background checks they should have done.

From what Stephen Francis is saying, the two took Xuereb into their confidence, virtually against his will, to the point where Xuereb stayed at Asafa's house.

If Francis is to be believed, he was unaware of the new supplements they were taking. Why the two wouldn't tell their coach of so many years what they were taking remains a good question. Not long after, the two were found with banned substances in their systems. On the face of it, this doesn't look good on the athletes.

As part of their defence, the two are insisting that they didn't know the supplement was tainted, and that they went to different measures to try to establish its 'cleanness'. It may well be true, of course, but that's an oft-repeated line from most athletes who find themselves in a similar predicament. Ignorance of the law, we are often told, is no excuse. At worst, these two were guilty of taking substances to enhance performance; at best, they were careless to take supplements without GUARANTEEING that they were up to snuff.

Dr Wright's credibility

Now a lot of the attention from the defence is on JADCO, with Dr Paul Wright as its representative. All of a sudden, Dr Wright's competence and qualifications are now being brought into question. I suppose if you discredit Dr Wright enough, thereby establishing that he and, by extension, JADCO, didn't do enough to educate athletes about drugs, it does help the athletes to say, "Well, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into."

But Dr Wright is not on trial here. Even if Simpson and Powell's defence establishes that Dr Wright is a nincompoop and a fraud, and never went through the door of a medical school in his life, would that really matter? If Dr Wright was the tester, or sample collector, and it is established that he did his work on the day in question with professionalism and competence, does it matter what difficulties he may have gone through 30-plus years ago, to get his medical licence?

Surely, JADCO can improve on a lot of things, including increasing public awareness of supplements and drugs to its athletes. However, is that a good enough reason for athletes to use if they are found with substances in their systems? What message would that be sending? That experienced professional athletes can just take what they want and then blame JADCO for not sufficiently warning them about these things?

Orville Higgins is a sportscaster at KLAS ESPN Sports Radio. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.