Drugs in Sport: Doping cases bring about sadly familiar feeling

Two weeks ago today I was sitting in the Dead Goat Saloon in Salt Lake City alongside Britain's first Olympic skiing medallist. Three hours earlier, Alain Baxter's performance on an ice-hard switchback of a slalom course at Deer Valley had made him famous; slightly less than three hours earlier, unbeknown to all those around him at the bar and, I like to believe, him too, he had produced the urine sample which threatens to make him infamous.

Baxter's case has still to be determined. But assuming the second part of his sample confirms the findings from the first, which indicated the use of the banned stimulant methamphetamine, then this 28-year-old from Aviemore is on the slippery slope towards losing the medal it has taken British alpine skiing 78 years to attain.

When I recall the amiable, awkward way in which Baxter accepted a succession of congratulations on that afternoon, and the quiet pride with which he viewed his performance on the mountain as it was replayed to the noisy bar via the television in the corner, I feel sad about his unhappy re-emergence on to the nation's front pages.

Part of that regret, I have to say, is selfish. As we meander into the 21st century it is doping, more than anything else, which threatens to rob sport of its meaning. By extension, that undermines those who are paid to write about sport. As every new doping case emerges, the question "What am I watching? What have I seen?" has to be applied with even greater rigour.

No sport is immune – despite ritual protestations. I recently witnessed a lengthy and ultimately unresolved argument over doping between an athletics promoter and a reporter who spends most of his time covering football. The promoter insisted that plenty of top players were doing something pharmacological that they shouldn't; the reporter insisted that booze, rather than drugs, was the only likely problem for the vast majority of our leading performers. "I know they're not on it".... "You'd be surprised"... "I know they're not on it"... "You'd be surprised".

As recent events on the Continent have indicated, the likelihood has to be that misuse of drugs in British football, whether recreational or otherwise, has not been restricted to Charlton Athletic's youth team.

But football, and indeed any team sport, has an inherent advantage in that it relies upon something greater than the sum of its parts for success. Individual sports, such as skiing, or athletics, can be more profoundly influenced by those who transform their capacity by illegal means.

And for those who, like myself, regularly cover such Olympic sports, the sequence of emotions which greets news of doping cases has become queasily familiar.

It's uncomfortable when you hear that someone you have chatted to, perhaps had a drink or a meal with, has suddenly been relocated to the roped-off area marked "Adverse Doping".

For anyone who believes doping in sport is wrong, it should not matter who is caught transgressing. Whether the latest case is a Chinese distance runner you have never heard of, or the guy you bought a drink the other week, it should be another step towards making life fair for those who do not cheat.

The reality is, of course, that it causes far greater consternation when the accused is a Brit. And the temptation, almost always, is to seek extenuating circumstances for those errant souls closer to home.

Late in 1999, I was summoned along with a handful of other journalists to meet a British athlete who wanted to announce independently that he was the runner involved in a doping case that had just emerged. I can still remember the sinking sensation I had when I saw Mark Richardson, the Olympic 400 metres relay silver medallist, sitting in the sports cafe that had been chosen as the venue.

He put his case. He said he had never knowingly taken any banned substance. And when he had finished, he went around the table, asking each of us in turn what we thought. Effectively, he was asking us if we believed him. I did.

Two years later, after he had missed the Olympics, his ban was shortened by the authorities, who belatedly accepted that his positive test for the banned steroid nandrolone had come about because of a contaminated nutritional supplement.

Richardson, relatively speaking, has been fortunate. Although he did not dispute that he had been technically guilty of doping – the stuff was in his system – he has been able to clear his name.

It may be that Baxter will be able to do something similar. I hope so. But given the International Olympic Committee's crucial principle of strict liability – if it's in you, however it got there, it's your responsibility – his chances look bleak.

From every point of view, that's a shame.