On Wednesday last week, two-time weighlifting Olympic gold medalist Hsu Shu-ching (許淑淨) issued an apology on Facebook, saying that she had mistakenly taken a dietary supplement containing a banned substance recommended by some relatives and friends to ease stress-induced insomnia.
Doping is against fairness in sports competition and sportsmanship. At the request of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee (CTOC) the next day released a list of 11 Taiwanese athletes who have been suspended from competition due to failed doping tests.
This is reminiscent of Russia’s large-scale systematic doping, which led to 118 athletes being banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Russia was also banned from last year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This shows that the consequences of doping are severe.
As winning is the ultimate goal in sports, the process is often filled with competitiveness and strategies. Several renowned and outstanding international athletes have breached WADA’s doping rules to win, and paid a considerable price.
US cyclist Lance Armstrong serves as living proof. Apart from his astonishing record of seven Tour de France titles, Armstrong was acclaimed for having beaten cancer.
Unfortunately, he later tested positive for banned substances, which he had taken for a long time to boost his blood oxygen-carrying capacity and his performance. His reputation was ruined overnight.
The Armstrong scandal was adapted into a film, The Program. Highly competitive sports are tough, but the film reminds us that top athletes are ordinary people with ordinary desires. As some of them gain victories through improper means, are those in the sports world well aware of the doping problem while pretending to be ignorant of it?
The doping scandal in the nation’s weightlifting circles is a major crisis, and crisis management requires rational consciousness and effective actions.
Faced with such a major crisis, local authorities should adopt “outside-in thinking” when trying to resolve the mess. Based on past doping cases abroad, the international sports world has for years maintained a serious and professional attitude toward doping among athletes from all countries.
Once doping breaches are confirmed, WADA would repeatedly express its concerns to the countries involved while requesting that they disclose detailed, reliable and trustworthy information.
If the national authorities do not respond adequately, they might be suspected of committing a “structural crime,” and athletes might be disqualified from the Olympics. As the party representing Taiwan, the CTOC should tread cautiously.
Since Hsu’s case has been brought to light, the authorities should tackle the crisis promptly and professionally to prevent it from getting worse.
When dealing with WADA, the CTOC should learn from the examples of other countries by making transparent information exchanges with the agency through the right channels, proving that it can stand up to the test.
It should work hard to turn the big problem into a small one, so the case can quickly come to a close.
This case serves as a lesson for Taiwan’s sports-related organizations and personnel, and is a reminder to athletes and the public that doping is a dead end.
Doping is harmful not only to athletes’ bodies, but also their reputations, as they lose face and eventually their career.
Tao Yi-che is a teacher at the Affiliated High School of National Chengchi University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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