Humor:

New generation of Olympic drug cheats will be full of beans

September 14, 2000

The year is 2028, just before the Olympic Games. A thick-set man in a trenchcoat and dark glasses sidles up to a short, fat bespectacled man in a quiet, seedy back-alley.

"Got the money?" he demands in a whisper.

"Yeah, $1000 bucks in unmarked $10 bills - just like you said," the man replies. "Got the stuff?"

"Right here," said the man, producing a small jar from his pocket.

"Is it good?" asks the buyer, taking from his pocket a moth-eaten wad of cash bundled together tightly with rubber bands.

"It's the best. It's from Columbia."

"Wow! But is it detectable?"

"No. I told you, it's the best. Just drink 18 cups made with this before each game and there is no way known you will fall asleep, no matter how boring the game is."

The Olympic sport in question is chess; the Colombian substance in the jar is instant coffee.

The scenario is fantasy, of course, but the push to get chess admitted into the Olympic Games is very real, and has been for some years.

This is quite topical at the moment, with the 2000 Olympic Games about to start in Sydney, Australia.

Chess prides itself as being a drug-clean sport, unlike many of the disciplines which will be contested in Sydney.

The International Olympic Federation spends a lot of time talking about drug cheats and the need to eliminate them from the Games.

But the battle is a tough one.

As soon as the IOC comes up with a foolproof test, the drug cheats come up with a new drug.

If there's a demand, you can bet your life (as drug-cheating athletes do), there will be a supplier.

In the past two weeks, according to the SMH Sydney Games web site a clutch of Chinese athletes, among them rowers, track athletes and swimmers, failed blood tests and were withdrawn from their team, Canadian hammer thrower Robin Lyons tested positive to the anabolic steroid nandrolone, two Hungarian runners were forbidden to compete when their convictions for steroid use were turned down and Canadian equestrian competitor Eric Lamaze was cut from his team after testing positive to cocaine use. A trainer from Uzbekistan was also stripped of vials of human growth hormone by Customs officials.

"Weightlifting's reputation as an unending source of Olympic scandal was upheld when Chinese Taipei lifter Chen Po-pu was expelled from the Sydney Games," the site reported yesterday.

"The result of a pre-Games test revealing traces of an anabolic steroid in Po-pu's system was received by the Chinese Taipei camp on Tuesday night. Team management said the lifter, who was to compete in the 62kg class on Sunday, was flown home.

"The disclosure was the second weightlifting has had to endure in the past week - 23-year-old Czech Republic lifter Zbynek Vacura was similarly ordered to return home last Friday after testing positive to the use of an anabolic steroid during a training camp in August."

The IOC will be very happy to hear that chess does not have drug problems - well, as far as it can tell.

In fact, Australian chess grandmaster Ian Rogers said at the weekend the world chess federation, FIDE, had admitted it would drug test players at next month's Chess Oympiad in Istanbul only for publicity purposes.

"Tacitly accepting that it currently has little idea which drugs might be performance-enhancing for chess players, FIDE said in a statement that the tests in Istanbul would result in no players being named or sanctioned no matter what substances were found in their urine. (blood tests have already been ruled out)," Rogers wrote in his chess column in the Sunday Canberra Times.

"In order to make the imposition of drug tests more palatable to a deeply sceptical chess community, FIDE made a point of stating that it will not be testing for alcohol and cannabis, since it has already been decided that these substances would detract from, rather than enhance, chess performance."

Here's the killer punch though:

"Hinting that caffeine will eventually be on the banned list, " Rogers wrote, "FIDE has warned that more than five cups of brewed coffee before or during a game could put a player in the danger zone."

I cannot speak for others, but for me being able to drink coffee while playing is the last thing chess has got going for it.

If you can no longer smoke dope while en passanting, or slurp a beer while manipulating the white pieces and trying to wriggle out of a particularly nasty Dragon variation of the Sicilian Defence, what else is left but to indulge in a few cupfuls of Columbia's best!

I have my heart set on competing at the 2028 Games - and I am going to start collecting those unmarked $10 bills right away.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it