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Unnecessary roughness Romanian gymnast is the victim in a half-hearted war
SYDNEY, Australia -- This story saddens me. I am haunted by the face of Andreea Raducan, a 16-year-old, dark-eyed Romanian gymnast, as she sat at her press conference after winning the women's all-around competition. Her coach, Octavian Belu, was singing her praises, and she was listening in childlike rapture, still aglow. During a week in which she would turn 17, and this was her birthday present to herself. It saddens me because it is a story about drugs, not competition; about a doctor's error, not an athlete's accomplishment. Most of all, it saddens me because I have a 16-year-old at home. It is an age when dreams should be brought to flower rather than crushed. "She's devastated, of course," Nadia Comaneci reported when I asked her how Raducan was holding up. "She's been in her room crying. She's 16, wondering what the heck is going on. She just took what the doctor gave her. She doesn't know." Raducan was the first Romanian to win the crown jewel of Olympic gymnastics since Comaneci so memorably did so in 1976. Raducan, a 4'10", 82-pound charmer, celebrated by standing on the shoulders of her coach and blowing kisses to the SuperDome crowd. "She's always had that personality," said Comaneci, who has known Raducan since the younger gymnast was nine. "She's very funny in person. Very open. When you're small, like she is, you have to make everything look bigger than you are, especially in the floor exercise. You can't teach that. She went out and showed the crowd: 'This is nothing.' With all that pressure on her, she delivered. My mother told me that back home the people went out in the streets to celebrate, which never happens in gymnastics. Andreea is a big hero there now." That was then. Two days later the Romanian federation was informed that Raducan had failed her drug test. Pseudoephedrine, which is on the IOC's banned list of drugs, had shown up in her urine sample. Pseudoephedrine is a mild stimulant that's found in cold medicines like Sudafed (as in: pseudophed). It can be purchased by you and me over the counter. But it's placed in the same class as cocaine, steroids, and human growth hormones by the IOC. (The IAAF, the ruling body in track, only issues its athletes warnings if they test positive for pseudoephedrine.) Romania's team doctor, Ioachin Oana, had given Raducan two cold tablets at some point during the week, and when she was tested after the all-around competition the pseudoephedrine in her system exceeded the legal limit. The IOC had little choice but to strip Raducan of her gold, while acknowledging it was clear she hadn't intentionally violated any rules. It allowed her to keep the team gold she'd won on Tuesday and the silver medal she'd won on vault Sunday because she hadn't tested positive on those days. Dr. Oana, who is either a moron or a fall guy, was banned from the Olympics through 2004. "A cold pill," groaned U.S. Olympic Committee vice chair Paul George when I discussed the incident with him Tuesday morning. "I knew it had to be something like that." Gymnasts, it so happens, are among the cleanest athletes in the Olympics. I believe that. Last summer I spent two weeks studying the East German sports system and its doping program, which was systematically overseen by GDR doctors and sports officials between the late '60s and the late '80s, when the Berlin Wall came down. The only two Olympic sports in which East German athletes didn't receive anabolic steroids from a young age were sailing and gymnastics. The muscles of gymnasts, GDR doctors found, became too dense if the athletes were put on steroids, and they lost the necessary flexibility to do their tumbling tricks. So it's no wonder that, before Raducan, no gymnast had ever lost a medal for failing a drug test in the Olympics. That she was stripped of her title for the use of a cold pill seems the worst sort of overreaction, a triumph of inflexibility over common sense. But in all wars there are innocent victims, even in half-hearted wars, which the IOC's skirmish against drugs certainly is. Said George, who has been nominated for the USOC presidency, "It's a shame we can't separate the real cheaters from the ones who were just caught in a mistake." Maybe someday they will. In the meantime, how will Andreea Raducan feel when she remembers her 16th year, one that for a fleeting few days was the happiest of her life? It saddens me to think. Sports Illustrated senior writer E.M. Swift is in Sydney covering the
Olympics for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back daily to read Swift's
behind-the-scenes reports from Down Under.
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