Col­in Croft

What is it that al­lows pro­fes­sion­al sports peo­ple to be­tray them­selves, ef­forts, fam­i­lies, coach­es, sup­port­ers and coun­tries, when it comes to con­sum­ing il­le­gal sub­stances-drugs -sup­pos­ed­ly for bet­ter per­for­mances? Is it fame, for­tune, stu­pid­i­ty, ar­ro­gance, ig­no­rance? Lon­don 2012 Olympics is five months away. The specter of drugs con­sump­tion, mask­ing and un­mask­ing, must be dis­cussed. Al­most pre­dictably, there could be drug in­stances there! Since Ben John­son's sit­u­a­tion at Seoul 1988 Olympics, Mar­i­on Jones' es­capades, and, be­fore those, East Ger­man ath­letes in dis­tant Olympics past, the ath­let­ic world has been try­ing hard to erad­i­cate drugs. In­deed, there have been sev­er­al re­cent dis­clo­sures there­of, with pro­fes­sion­al cy­cling tak­ing head­lines! "If yuh mek yuh bed ard, yuh gah foh lie dung pun um," say Guyanese. Para­phrased, if you make de­ci­sions and choic­es, you must ac­cept con­se­quences, what­ev­er they may be. It amazes as to the ex­tent mod­ern sports pro­fes­sion­als go to, try­ing hard for ex­on­er­a­tion, af­ter mak­ing such bad choic­es! Crick­et, es­pe­cial­ly West In­dies crick­et, has been for­tu­nate in this re­gard. While the sport, in our re­gion, has been slight­ly em­broiled in match-fix­ing scan­dals, se­ri­ous­ly so for po­lit­i­cal shenani­gans, pow­er strug­gles and out­right id­io­cy, we can still boast that we do not have to "do drugs" to win, or to lose!

That is a ma­jor mir­a­cle, con­sid­er­ing our eco­nom­i­cal po­si­tions and ge­o­graph­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment of Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca. Thou­sands die per month in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries be­cause of drugs! While bats­men, per­haps with ex­cep­tions, would prob­a­bly not per­form bet­ter un­der in­flu­ences of alien stuff; en­hanc­ing or hal­lu­cino­genic; bowlers, es­pe­cial­ly faster bowlers, could have need­ed ex­ter­nal help. Thank­ful­ly, hope­ful­ly last­ing­ly, "tekking drugs" has nev­er been, and will nev­er be, our func­tion­al fac­tor! Oh, there have been ru­mours, in­nu­en­dos and damned lies, but noth­ing so dras­tic that could dam­age crick­et per­ma­nent­ly. All we need now is, some­how, to get our crick­et­ing pol­i­tics in prop­er or­der! Crick­et has pro­duced ab­solute­ly ex­cel­lent bowlers, most­ly fast, in the last 40 or so years. None, re­peat, def­i­nite­ly none, as far as I know, has even had a sniff; no pun in­tend­ed; of in­volve­ment in any­thing such. I can cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that I have nev­er, nor do I know of any oth­ers, who have been thus­ly mind­ed! Con­sid­er West In­dies' Court­ney Walsh and Curt­ley Am­brose, Aus­tralians Den­nis Lillee and Glen Mc Grath, Pak­ista­nis Wasim Akram and Waqar You­nis, New Zealand's Richard Hadlee and Shane Bond, South Africa's Makhaya Nti­ni and Sean Pol­lock, Eng­land's Andy Cad­dick and Dar­ren Gough, In­dia's Kapil Dev and Jav­a­gal Sri­nath, Sri Lan­ka's Chamin­da Vaas , and many oth­ers, in­clud­ing me too, I sup­pose! They have bowled more than half a mil­lion de­liv­er­ies in su­perb in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reers, dou­bling, even tripling those, if first class games are in­clud­ed. Av­er­ag­ing 'run-ins' of 20 me­ters, some longer, they will, col­lec­tive­ly, have cov­ered 20,000 + kilo­me­ters. Mod­ern cars do not trav­el such dis­tances with­out help!

Yet, none of us have ever had to re­sort to be­ing un­der the in­flu­ence of any­thing un­to­ward to get peo­ple out. We re­lied on sheer strength, train­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, skills, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. We did it all nat­u­ral­ly! Amer­i­ca's vari­ant of crick­et, base­ball, has had se­vere trau­ma about drugs and its play­ers'. Strange­ly, it was not pitch­ers who had per­for­mance in­duc­ing sit­u­a­tions, even though some; Dwight Good­en comes to mind; have had ca­reers short­ened by drug abuse. Most­ly, the scourge has been with hit­ters! Bar­ry Bonds, of Pitts­burg Pi­rates and San Fran­cis­co Gi­ants, 1986 to 2007; Sam­my So­ta who played for Texas Rangers, Chica­go White Sox, Chica­go Cubs, Bal­ti­more Ori­oles, 1989 to 2007; and Mark Mc Guire, who played for Oak­land Ath­let­ics and St Louis Car­di­nals, 1986 to 2001, record break­ers all, have al­so been se­ri­ous­ly im­pli­cat­ed, or con­firmed, to have tak­en an­a­bol­ic steroids in their ca­reers! Now, road cy­cling is back in drug news. Cy­cling cer­tain­ly clears my head, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. One must think for every mo­ment while on the sad­dle, or se­ri­ous in­juries, and death, can oc­cur, es­pe­cial­ly on Caribbean roads. Dri­vers nev­er see rid­ers. There are no safe­ty pro­vi­sions made here for cy­clists! I al­ways try, des­per­ate­ly, to keep my­self in rel­a­tive­ly good phys­i­cal shape, with the hope of en­ter­ing fu­ture "Mas­ters" biathlons, per­haps even triathlons, even though my swim­ming skills need work. With many hills and miles run, though, and many crick­et games played, some parts will even­tu­al­ly hurt; bad­ly! Thus, I ride much these days for fit­ness, 25-30 miles each time, four times per week, on a per­fect­ly made, mas­sive, ex­pen­sive too, Raleigh Air­lite road rac­er. I plan to get a Trek Cronus soon. It is thrilling stuff, but, in the Caribbean, un­safe. Friends have been in­jured, and killed, on roads in Guyana and T&T!

In Aus­tralia and Unit­ed States, there are spe­cif­ic bike trails, where no pedes­tri­ans or es­pe­cial­ly mo­tor­ized ve­hi­cles can ac­cess. In­stead of us­ing zil­lions to build white ele­phant crick­et and foot­ball sta­dia, which will be used, at most, twice a year, politi­cians could build bike trails in the Caribbean too! I grew up in Guyana see­ing George "Boy Blue" Cum­ber­batch and "Boo­gie" De Fre­itas tus­sling hard with Trinidad & To­ba­go's Roger Gib­bons at the parched and bil­liard-ta­ble smooth Bour­da crick­et ground. I saw T&T's Leslie King and Emile Abra­ham on the road, and at T&T's Guaracara Park crick­et ground. For­mer Guyana cham­pi­on Neville Hunte was an ac­quain­tance un­til he mi­grat­ed, and dis­ap­peared, while for­mer T&T's cham­pi­ons Gene Samuels and Michael Phillips own ex­cel­lent cy­cle stores that help keep me, and many oth­ers, on the road. Just lis­ten­ing to them talk about cy­cling is re­al in­spi­ra­tion for me!

I was even for­tu­nate enough to be present at 2007 Tour de France's start, which set off from Lon­don's Trafal­gar Square, the first time that that race was be­gun in Lon­don in its over 100 years his­to­ry! I tru­ly won­der how Bel­gian Ed­die Mer­ckx, Spain's Miguel In­durain and Al­ber­to Con­ta­dor, Ger­many's Jan Ull­rich, Britain's Mark Cavendish and USA's Lance Arm­strong, com­pet­ed, com­plet­ed, and won, so very reg­u­lar­ly, Tour de France races; al­most too eas­i­ly. Those must have been su­per-hu­man ef­forts! Even with my com­par­a­tive­ly mild in­volve­ment in road cy­cling and rac­ing, I can well un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult pro­fes­sion­al cy­cling can be. Two hours per day, every oth­er day, is good enough for me. Two con­sec­u­tive weeks in any sad­dle could do se­ri­ous dam­age to any, prob­a­bly all, parts of my body! Yet, on­ly last week, Arm­strong, Ull­rich and Con­ta­dor have been in­volved in drug dop­ing sit­u­a­tions. For­tu­nate­ly for Lance, de­spite many team-mates com­ing for­ward and ful­ly ad­mit­ting that they had seen him tak­ing drugs, in­ves­ti­ga­tions by USA's FBI in­to Arm­strong's team's ac­tiv­i­ties have been put aside. Not so lucky for UIl­rich and Con­ta­dor. Jan, who re­tired in 2007, has been banned for two years for blood dop­ing by the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport. His re­sults from 2005 on­wards have been an­nulled. Con­ta­dor, still ac­tive, suf­fered even worse fates. The 2010 Tour de France win­ner has been stripped of that crown, and has al­so been banned by CAS, for blood dop­ing, un­til 05 Au­gust. More im­por­tant­ly, he will miss Lon­don 2012 Olympics and Tour De France 2012. Those re­sults are ex­treme­ly sad for cy­cling! Why these choic­es? What is it about drugs and sports? If you can, be "clean," please, but still en­joy!