Your Call, 7.23

Well, it looks like tennis may be about to have another in its seemingly endless series of knock-down,drag-out doping controversies - this time with a female protagonist, Tamira Paszek. You have to wonder where all this will end, but perhaps more to the point, where it all comes from - lax regulations or over-enthusiastic efforts to ensure that the sport is clean?

I'm still in the latter camp, and I've seen nothing to refute the claim that tennis is by and large clean, and well-policed (including that recent Slate piece, which was the usual hit job filled with nothing more than innuendo and the author's prejudiced speculations). The bottom line for me is that tennis has embraced the stringent WADA code (part of the price of being an Olympic Games sport), and the powers-that-be recognize the high stakes.

Tennis is, broadly speaking, a sport more like cycling than like soccer, with a cast of characters from every far-flung corner of the globe. The sport is vulnerable to doping cheats for a host of reasons including elements as subtle as peer pressure (or lack thereof), differing cultural values and norms, even the degree-of-education (or lack thereof) of a player, especially a young one. I think tennis confronted these issues some years ago and acted to keep control of the situation. The price has been fairly heavy, and borne by some unusual suspects, including Martina Hingis and Richard Gasquet, who were, if not exactly scapegoats, then certainly sacrificial lambs on the altar of athletic piety.

Also, I can't discount the incessant complaints the players make about having to go through their routine drug tests. Just a few weeks ago at Wimbledon, Serena Williams complained on the day after she won the women's final that she was unable to escape the grounds at a reasonable hour because of all the post-match obligations  - which included her doping test. The players have been fully conditioned to the drug-testing regimen, which is a good if intrusive thing.

The funny thing about doping is that it really invites the most outrageous and circumstantial speculations. A guy - or girl - whips himself into fantastic shape and the first thing a certain element of the public claims is that the player must be doping. There's a lot wrong with that kind of thinking, starting with the fact that it's profoundly insulting.

The Paszek case is interesting to me because it involves blood transfusion, and "blood doping" has been on the radar for quite some time in various forms, including the process by which blood is put through a centrifuge of some kind to enhance its oxygen content, It's hard to imagine a player trying to get away with something quite so well-known, and it will be interesting to see the official explanation Paszek offers.

There's another factor that ought to be considered in doping cases. Top athletes search for every possible advantage, which certainly includes elements of nutrition and performance enhancing chemistry. What do you do if some geek in a lab thinks he's come up with a supplement or chemical cocktail that might improve your performance, and isn't an acknowledged banned substance?

Does taking any kind of performance-enhancing substance or chemical constitute a violation of the spirit of clean competition? If so, Gatorade and all those other drinks, bars, gels and grains that are said to improve athletic performance better start pulling their advertisements. What if a Javan marathon runner discovered that ingesting a derivative of some organic root greatly enhanced her stamina - would that be "fair", or "clean"?

The bottom line is that all performance-enhancing substances, from coffee to HGH,  are basically legal until some legislative body decides they are not, which is why the entire doping controversy is part cops and robbers, and part scientific probing at the intersection of chemistry and athletic performance. It's an evolving science, and a player can easily get caught in the seam where the legitimate quest for improved performance (or, in a case like Paszek's, physical rehabilitation) bangs up against the anti-doping establishment's attempt to define acceptable performance enhancement. This is, ultimately, a moral/ethical issue as much as a scientific one, which is where the great seam, or fault, lies.

Anyway, this is Your Call for today, have at it and enjoy the tennis being played today. I hope the weather in Indianapolis is improved.

-- Pete