Good article here from the Observer:
Running away from the truth
Linford Christie is still in denial and, despite the outrage over Dwain Chambers, still defending a sport whose image has been badly damaged
Kevin Mitchell
February 17, 2008 12:12 AM
It is hard to know what to make of Linford Christie, busted for drugs at the end of an otherwise illustrious running career, yet, nine years on, still laughing his sheepish, eyes-down laugh, still denying against overwhelming evidence to the contrary that his sport has been traumatised almost beyond repair by the persistent, unstoppable use of banned substances.
He is 47 and still impressively muscled, as always a slightly scary time-bomb, an athlete whose life has been defined, for good and bad, by his singular ability to run faster than all but a few people on earth.
Christie is still running, from other peopleâs version of âthe truthâ and all things difficult. But, were he ever to relent and talk openly about his experiences, he could do so much good for athletics. He could, as the American drugs pedlar Victor Conte put the case for one of his famous customers, Dwain Chambers, last week, be a good guy, a thief set to catch a thief.
But Christie isnât ready for that sort of redemption. To this day, he denies taking drugs. British officials gave him the benefit of the doubt over traces of nandralone found in his system at a small meeting in Germany when he was in semi-retirement in 1999; the International Amateur Athletics Federation did not. So, he will go to his grave officially a cheat, however uncomfortable that is for him.
In 1988, he lined up with Ben Johnson and other sprinting behemoths in that infamous 100 metres final in Seoul and later was given silver when the Canadian was exposed as a super-charged freak. Then, when Christie himself tested positive for pseudoephedrine, an IOC committee cleared him by 11 votes to 10, believing his story that the juice had been in a few cups of ginseng tea.
Whatever the truth or otherwise of the allegations against Christie, they are surely reason enough for us to ask him about Chambers and his dilemma. You would imagine he would have much to contribute to such a debate. No, he doesnât see it that way. âLet me ask you,â he says provocatively, âWhat do you think?â As if he did not know.
No, he doesnât want to talk about Chambers, he says, because âYou guys are always writing this negative stuffâ. He wants us to know that athletics is still a wholesome family sport. We would be surprised, he reckons, how many parents still bring their kids to him and other coaches.
Ironically or not, Christie does not much care for Chambers, who left his Nuff Respect management team six years ago to join Christieâs business rival and one-time friend, John Regis, at Stellar Athletics. But Christie probably cares for some journalists even less. And he invokes an informal omerta, a vow of sullen silence that serves as a blanket refutation for all tough questions.
But does he really believe people donât care about the apparently wide and persistent use of banned substances in his sport? Does he think they donât care about cheating any more? Does he not have a view on Chambers, who was once a friend and is now an unavoidable leper in his sport because administrators cannot technically ignore him since he has done his time for drugs use?
âListen,â he says, âIt doesnât matter whether itâs right or wrong [picking Chambers for the World Indoor Championships]. People just want to come and watch the athletics. The quickest from A to B is a straight line. Thatâs what people come to watch. I just care about me. Iâm in my lane. I donât care whatâs in the lane beside me.â
The awful import of what he is saying is that he might be right. Perhaps people are as cynical as he is. Weâre just in our own little lanes, eyes straight ahead. Whatâs the point? Just âmove onâ, he says. Which is exactly what the nice woman from Puma wants us to do. She has been hovering alongside our conversation, interjecting repeatedly when we go off-script, when we ask awkward, unwholesome, un-family questions about drugs. She wants us to talk about Pumaâs fashion show in London that night, featuring the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and the lovely Norwegian middle-distance runner Kristine Eikren Engeset. Thatâs why weâve been invited to this pleasant hotel, to listen to Linford, a long-time Puma man, chat with Bolt and Engeset about their catwalk gig, and maybe share a few platitudes about their season.
Nearby, endorsing the wholesomeness and selling Puma as sweetly as he possibly can is the companyâs chairman, Jochen Zeitz. Smiling, tanned and smart in an open-necked shirt, Zeitz is the epitome of corporate, believable cool. âWe want to develop products to help athletesâ performance,â he says. Puma, apparently, are also getting into showbusiness, fashion, sailing, Formula One. What more could you want to know?
Weâre spoiling the show. When I remind the v-nice PR woman that is what we do for a living, she says Linford had not wanted any of these questions asked and, no, we could not carry on.
I make a weak joke about this not being China and whatever happened to free speech. Linford, meanwhile, is edged away towards a hotel lift and disappears from our unseemly outburst of insurrection. Good night, and good luck.
And that, more or less, is the problem. It is not just the reviled chemists and the desperate athletes who are wrecking athletics, a sport that once was on a par with cricket and golf for probity; itâs the interested parties clinging to the myth that there is nothing wrong, the multi-national companies who sell billions of shoes and kit on the back of events such as the Olympics.
Not for them the moralising of pesky journalists. Never mind politics, it is sport and public relations that do not mix. Chambers? He is just another chump. His crime, after taking drugs, was to admit it, point out you could not win gold without them - then come back to the sport when everyone thought he had gone away for good.
He is the sportâs walking conscience, though. Sponsors donât want him anywhere near their meetings, either in Birmingham yesterday, or in Belgium. He will be reduced to picking up the odd payday here and there and then be marginalised again. Athletics will, as Christie says, âmove onâ.
In the United States, meanwhile, at least the debate is robust and in the open. No country on earth has a sports-drugs problem on the scale the Americans do. Athletics. Boxing. Baseball. Football. Politicians and film stars. Hookers and millionaires - theyâre all at it, either ârecreationallyâ or to juice up for a medal.
Last week, they were treated to a fine show in Washington. In front of a Congressional panel, Roger Clemens, probably the finest pitcher of modern times, swapped denials and counter-claims over four hours with Brian McNamee, who claimed he had once injected
Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. It was ugly, loud and, so far, inconclusive. But it was democracy in action. Clemens might be every bit as innocent as Christie says he was - and Chambers says he wasnât. Or he could be lying through his teeth. Whichever way it goes, that hearing in Congress is some way removed from the tacky little exercise played out in a London hotel last week.
What was remarkable was that Puma thought they could parade Christie in front of the media and expect us not to ask questions about drugs in the very week Chambers was the only story in athletics. Like runners who stick needles in their arms, the people who make the shoes to help them run so beautifully still live in fantasy land.