International sports have, for as long as I remember watching them, been a microcosm of geo-political forces and the battle of ideas among competing ideologies. The 1980 U.S. gold medal in hockey against the USSR was more than just a hockey game. It was a moral victory in the heart of the Cold War, the validation of the American way over the Soviet state. Sports are also a microcosm of how we believe society ought to be. It is goal-oriented and singularly focused. It is the purest of meritocracies. It is a place where you train hard, often at great personal sacrifice, and are rewarded with victory or the knowledge that you did your best. Sports is a rule-ordered testament to the human spirit and our shared experience. Why then does our normal view on justice so quickly take its leave when cheating is alleged?
At the Summer Olympics, U.S. swimmer Lilly King’s public sparring with Russia’s Yulia Efimova made for some great television. When Efimova won a heat and signaled she was #1, King, watching from the ready room, waved the same finger to the screen as if to say, not on her watch. King later made public comments about Efimova’s presence at the games given her history with banned substances. The stage was set for the epic showdown of good (King) versus evil (Efimova), clean versus doping, and the U.S. versus Russia. The problem is good television rarely makes for solid moral reasoning.
According to the Washington Post, Efimova, who lives and trains in L.A., took an off-the-shelf supplement in 2013 that contained the banned hormone DHEA. It was deemed an unintentional act for which the normal two-year ban was reduced to 16 months. She served her suspension. Prior to the Olympics she was suspended for testing positive for a substance only recently banned. She claimed she stopped taking it when it made the list, but traces were still in her body. She appealed the suspension and won. She knew only days before the games began that she would be allowed to compete. The die was cast.
Lilly King, as are we all, is allowed her opinion. She is certainly free to speak out on whatever issue she feels compelled to speak out about. But we, here in the land where a group of rag-tag hockey amateurs defended our honor as a law-abiding, liberty-loving people against the authoritarian, Communist specter of the Soviet Union in 1980, should not be so quick to judge. Efimova took a banned substance. Whether she did so intentionally or not, she served her suspension. She paid her debt to the society of swimmers and fans. Her second case was heard on appeal, and she was exonerated. She met and exceeded every requirement to compete in the Rio Olympics. It may not have been the best public relations ploy to claim #1 after a qualifying heat, but she certainly did not deserve the boos that greeted her at every introduction. That was an odious reaction, particularly when coming from citizens of a nation whose justice system is founded on the positive notions that almost everyone deserves a second chance and time served is just that.
Doping is a problem in professional and international sports. There is ample concern for the efficacy of governing bodies in their ability to regulate substances and objectively discover violators. Efforts to increase transparency and improve these systems have a very long way to go. But a governing body trusted with regulating competition and validating the recipients of Olympic medals must also be trusted to allow athletes who have served their suspensions to compete. That, sports fans, is what justice demands.
M. Shane Riza 