Sport doping hits grassroots

Parents ask the Education Ministry for more organized control in school competitions

By Nikos Constantopoulos - Kathimerini

When we reach the stage where parents are willing to allow their own children to take performance-enhancing drugs, or consult specialists to this end, then, slightly paraphrasing Shakespeare, there’s something rotten going on in the kingdom of sports.

This reality is not confined to top-level competition. Nowadays we can talk of teenagers aged 16, 17, and 18, who use banned substances to achieve results in national school competition and subsequently benefit from state legislation concerning entry into sports-related tertiary institutions.

This article was prompted by an open letter, published by Kathimerini, sent just days ago to the Education Ministry by concerned parents of young swimmers ahead of national school competition. In the letter, parents requested that strict measures be taken to avoid doping cases at the junior-level event.

Suggestions forwarded by the parents included informing prospective competitors of the consequences that banned substances can have on their health. Moreover, the letter advocated the establishment of sanctions for those found guilty, implementation of strict doping control at school-level championships, and firm assessment of prescribed medication — which is banned in sports — for supposed treatment of various conditions.

The parents who took the initiative to write to the education minister and list their demands did very well. But taken alone, implementing organized control at school-level competitions is not enough to kill the monster. This is no ordinary monster. Any measures taken must strike at the roots.

While some laboratories strive to discover effective detection tests for various kinds of performance-enhancing drugs, others are hard at work mixing up modified elusive versions. As has been well documented, the latter are constantly one step ahead of the former.

Field authorities are currently expressing fears that genetic doping is headed for Olympic competition. Trying to detect this sort of activity will be a nightmare.

Being realistic, some of the culprits will get away with their deeds, irrespective of the measures taken. This, however, does not justify a passive approach to the issue. Whether it is national competition, or school competition determining entry into tertiary education programs, an iron hand is needed.

No doubt it will cost plenty to implement thorough controls, and the country’s various sports federations are not in a position to cope with the subsequent financial burdens. There is one solution. The state must cover these outlays, regardless of cost. If the state really means what it says, then this would be in line with the concern it occasionally expresses about obliterating doping cases.

To finance the measures, the state should manage its funds earmarked for sports more wisely, or else scrap expenditure on events of little interest to the country’s sporting reality, such as playing host to the European Badminton Championships. Admittedly, fringe events such as the one just mentioned do contribute something to Greek sports, but state funds allocated here ought to be downsized.

Ways to reduce doping do exist, as this newspaper has previously asserted. The question is whether the sufficient willingness exists to do so.