A 330-pound man who is not even competing in the Olympics cast his enormous shadow over what otherwise would have been remembered as one of the brightest nights of track and field in history.
The gloom left by Monday’s announcement that U.S. shot putter C.J. Hunter had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug also threatens to engulf his wife, Marion Jones, as she attempts to make Olympic history by winning five gold medals.
During a news conference Tuesday at which Jones briefly appeared to “show complete support for my husband,” Hunter broke into tears.
“Track and field has been great to me, but there is nothing anyone can say or do or offer me to bring any kind of shame on the people I love,” he said.
Not only must Jones deal with the distraction of having her husband found positive for the steroid nandrolone, she could face the same guilt by marital association that surrounded Irish swimmer Michelle Smith four years ago even before her eventual suspension for manipulating a drug test.
“The headlines won’t say `C.J. Hunter,'” said John Smith, coach of 100-meter champion Maurice Greene. “They will say, `Marion Jones’ husband.”‘
Earlier Tuesday, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee medical commission, Prince Alexandre de Merode of Belgium, said a check of IOC records found that Hunter also had failed three other tests for nandrolone over the summer and that international and U.S. track officials had failed to report them.
Olympic officials apparently decided to get the Hunter case into the open out of frustration over what they think is the U.S. track federation’s inaction over doping cases.
Victor Conte of Balco Labs in San Francisco, a nutritionist working with several Olympic athletes in Sydney, said Hunter was not taking a steroid. Conte, who appeared at the news conference on Hunter’s behalf, ascribed the presence of nandrolone in the urine sample Hunter gave at the July 28 Bislett Games in Oslo to quality-control problems in the manufacture of an iron supplement Hunter was taking.
Hunter said his wife was not taking any supplements.
Although Conte insisted the amounts found in the test were “trace levels,” IOC officials said the amounts of nandrolone were “1,000 times more” than the allowable level of 2 nanograms per milliliter of urine.
Hunter, 31, the reigning world champion in the shot put, withdrew from the Games Sept. 9 because of a knee injury. He said he learned about the drug test problem only after it was made public in news reports Monday. He then told Jones.
“I told her, `I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry,”‘ he said.
The news and headlines from Monday’s action could have recorded how Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman triumphed in the 400 meters despite the pressure of carrying the hopes of 19 million Australians , including most of the 112,524 fans at Stadium Australia, and how Michael Johnson of the U.S. became the first man in Olympic history to win consecutive 400-meter titles.
They could have said Stacy Dragila of the U.S. won the first Olympic women’s pole vault, while Vala Flosadottir’s bronze made her Iceland’s first female medalist, and that Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia had won a second straight 10,000 title in a finish closer than those of the two 100-meter races.
They would read that way in places other than the United States, where Jones’ quest to become the first woman to win five track and field gold medals is the story of the 2000 Olympics. Jones, who won the 100 meters Saturday, next competes Wednesday in the first two rounds of the 200 and the long jump qualifying. Her final medals would be in the 4×100- and 4×400-meter relays.
In an attempt to end rampant speculation about the case–and perhaps to chastise USA Track & Field for what the IAAF thinks is foot-dragging and cover-ups of doping positives–the international federation announced Monday that Hunter had tested positive.
Hunter said he had intended to retire after the Olympics from a sport that “never had been that important to me. I prayed for two years that if what had to happen for my wife to win five gold medals is something negative to me, so be it. All I wanted was her to achieve what she wanted to achieve.”
Once again, track and field was put on the defensive by a doping case involving a prominent athlete. This one took on a much larger dimension because of the relationship between Hunter and Jones, who were married Oct. 3, 1998.
“No one knew how clean other Olympics were, and no one knows how clean this one is,” USATF Executive Director Craig Masback said. “You can assume everyone is cheating or relatively few are cheating.”
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More and more the tendency has been to assume more cheating than less, because ineffective testing and the availability of undetectable drugs make it difficult to establish guilt or prove innocence.
“`It takes a lot away from what we’re doing as clean athletes,” Dragila said. “I hope it doesn’t tarnish what we have accomplished.”
The risk is greater for Jones. She could face the same doubts raised about Smith, an average swimmer who won three 1996 Olympic gold medals after marrying Erik de Bruin, a Dutch discus thrower who had been banned for steroids.
“Her athletic challenge has been made more challenging by all the developments so far,” Masback said.
Jones, 24, was the greatest female high school sprinter in U.S. history, but her track career languished at the University of North Carolina because of injuries and time lost to playing varsity basketball. Jones met Hunter in early 1996, when she was in the midst of two years of nearly complete inactivity in track. Four months after she returned to serious training in 1997, she had become world champion.
“She doesn’t deserve all these stories surrounding her,” Reineri said. “For Marion it is a pity and a tragedy. I hope she is strong enough to beat this tragedy the way she beats the other athletes on the track.”
Anti-U.S. sentiment that began with the embarrassment of the Salt Lake City bid corruption scandal has increased with White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey’s pointed criticism of the IOC’s anti-doping efforts.
“Of course there is anger, because your professional sports are totally doped and full of hard drugs, and some Americans are trying to tell the world what to do,” said IOC member Alex Gilady of Israel.
Both DeMerode and IAAF medical chief Arne Ljungqvist of Sweden have said in the past week that U.S. authorities have not been properly dealing with doping cases dating to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Ljungqvist said there were “10 or 12 cases” over the past one or two years in which the U.S. federation exonerated athletes without properly informing the IAAF.
“This has created the perception of a cover-up,” said IOC member Johann Olav Koss of Norway, winner of four speedskating gold medals. “That is totally unfair to the athletes. They made a huge mistake by not releasing information, which has created suspicions. It could be there is smoke in the wind, but not fire.”
Monday, McCaffrey sent a letter to Masback, advocating full disclosure.
“The most appropriate way to respond to allegations of impropriety-in particular complicity in doping, is to let the facts speak for themselves,” the letter said. “We urge USATF to make public a full accounting of results-management for the tests in question.”
In an hourlong news conference Monday, Masback insisted he was bound to silence by USATF confidentiality rules about doping cases.
He admitted the federation had some pending drug cases “in the system but insisted none of them involved a U.S. athlete who is competing here or one who had qualified but withdrawn. Masback soon realized that was wrong, since the Hunter case has been referred to USATF. He said Ljungqvist’s claims of unreported positive tests resulted from a misunderstanding.
“I’m not the least bit defensive,” Masback said. “I welcome the opportunity to dialogue with Johann Koss or anybody.”
He has been engaged in what could be called dialogue with U.S. Olympic Committee officials, who have called Masback in to explain why his federation has become a lightning rod for criticism about efforts to stop doping.
“Excuse me, but where is the international federation?” said IOC member Anita DeFrantz of the United States. “If they want to clean up the sport, they have to take control of the sport.”