Coach Sweeney's Corner: Drug Testing

Tyson Gay's B sample has not yet released so I can't say with absolute certainty if he cheated. His official stance is that he put his trust in someone, but here's the thing: As a grown adult, how many times have you ever been handed a pill or got cream massaged into you that you have no idea what that is. I'm going to guess if you are a star on the stage of Tyson Gay or Asafa Powell, that the chances are less than zero that you're in that situation.

Aside from the 1980's when a lot of big names were caught cheating, a lot of people are viewing this as the darkest day in the sport and a negative thing. I see a flip side: The argument against track and field's integrity is that the dopers always win and that doesn't make sense anymore if these people are being caught. Gay and Powell are arguably two of the most successful and high-profile sprinters of all time and the sport isn't afraid to let them go at the expense of keeping the sport clean.

So with the testing the sport getting better with the biological passport, I think it's just a matter of time before the sport will be clean. Athletes like Lance Armstrong were able to get away with doping because they didn't test out of season, but now an athlete has to submit to a drug test any time of the year wherever they are.

To keep having  improvement in keeping the sport clean, there needs to be a steady stream of funding behind that cause. Part of the reason the dopers have often been one step ahead of the testers is that the funding hasn't always been there for USADA and WADA.

As for the next stage of performance enhancement, I think it might be gene manipulation because doping has traditionally followed scientific progress. The reason any of these performance enhancement drugs exist in the first place is because they were initially developed in the medical community. Similarly, the scientific community is looking at ways to manipulate genes. Now when athletes tap into that, that could be a losing battle. How do you test within someone's DNA?

In the meantime, the sport is in a good place as long as it keeps striving to ensure that all its athletes are clean. The price of a few fallen heroes is a small price to pay for the integrity of everyone who crosses the finish line.

Coach Sweeney's Corner on Breaking Out Post-Collegially

Nick Symmonds and Will Leer turned in great performances yet again in the USATF championships this past weekend and Matthew Elliott, a non-professional runner, finished fourth in the 1500. In the wake of these results, Pacers' coach Dustin Sweeney had some thoughts on how to break out post-collegiately when you're not of a high pedigree:

"Once you get a sponsor, you're put on the map and the Catch-22 is that you have to have early success to get on that track. You have to run well in high school to get the attention of a good college program which makes it easier to get the attention of a sponsor.

The thing is that as soon as you graduate college, your stock drops. Its either really high or very low. That's a problem because you have to run extraordinarily well to get a sponsor after college. And the tragedy is that a lot of kids in the middle will stop running.

But what it boils down to as that people develop at different ages. Nick Symmonds, Will Leer, and some of our runners show that you can achieve great success later in life without that pedigree. Look at the guy who finished fourth, Matthew Elliott. He's just a school teacher who had a 4:42 mile in high school.

The thing is that running is the oldest sport in the world and in some cases the simplest. The athletes  with the best sponsorships are pampered with fancy equipment like underwater treadmills, and great athletes give up running because they think they need that level of support to succeed at the professional level, but  you don't necessarily need that to be a great runner."