King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The death of track and field: Why watch a sport where the only results that mean anything come from a lab? Plus: Tyson's finished! We mean it! (Please forget this by his next fight.)

Aug 3, 2004 | Track and field. Dead and deader.

Or at least doomed and doomeder.

What's the point of following this sport? We'll all watch it at the Olympics starting next week, the way we do volleyball and curling and that horse-jumping stuff every four years, but that's just because we'd watch phone book-reading at the Olympics. Beyond that, why invest the energy in track and field? The results mean nothing.

Except the drug-test results.

The latest is that U.S. sprinter Calvin Harrison will miss the Athens Games because he's been suspended for two years after he lost an arbitration hearing on a failed drug test. Harrison tested positive for modafinil, a banned prescription drug used to treat sleep and attention-deficit disorders, at the U.S. championships last year.

He also tested positive for a stimulant in 1993, and since the rules say two stimulant positives equals one steroids positive equals a two-year ban, he's banned until the summer of '06. Even though the banned stimulant he tested positive for 11 years ago, pseudoephedrine, commonly found in cold medications, is no longer banned.

Got that?

Good. Now explain it to me.

I'm not here to defend Calvin Harrison, who is either guilty as sin, an innocent victim, or both. Or neither. Really, I mean it when I say: Whatever. Calvin Harrison is small potatoes.

We're talking big picture here, and the picture is of a sport that's impossible to follow because the picture keeps changing. The results on the field are irrelevant. You did not see what you think you just saw, you'll find out in a few months or years. The final results will be posted at some unknown future date. Please stand by, and hold your applause until an arbitration panel somewhere delivers a decision on the matter.

All of the results from the time of Harrison's positive test last summer will be nullified, so it looks like the U.S. 1,600-relay team will have to forfeit its gold medal from the '03 world championships. Harrison was also on the 1,600-meter team that won a gold medal in the 2000 Olympics, which may have to be forfeited as well because of a positive steroid test in 1999 by Jerome Young, who was on the team.

The intentions are mostly good here. I think for the most part officials are trying to clean up the sport, trying to get rid of the rampant, maybe almost unanimous drug abuse among the athletes in order to protect the integrity of the competition and the health of current and future participants.

Next Page: There has to be a better way. Plus: Mike Tyson -- finished! (Until next time)

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