David Millar in February 2012. (Photo courtesy of Garmin-Barracuda)
When does an ex-doper become something more than that?
By Joe Lindsey
Maybe you saw it, maybe not, but earlier this week the Court of Arbitration for Sport handed down a landmark decision (PDF) that does no small amount of work in standardizing doping punishments.
CAS ruled unanimously that the British Olympic Association’s rule banning anyone ever convicted of doping from representing Britain at the Olympics was in violation of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s code.
The issue is essentially about what is proper punishment. Once an athlete has been found guilty of doping and sanctioned, is there any provision for continuing to limit that athlete’s competitive horizons? Put more prosaically, once an athlete has done the crime and the time, is he free to compete again?
In cycling, the case was widely seen as a referendum on David Millar, the Scottish pro who admitted to using EPO while riding on the French Cofidis team, served a two-year ban, and returned to the sport.
Another high-profile athlete who was a face of the case was track-and-field sprinter Dwain Chambers. But neither athlete was involved in the case—the challenge came from WADA. And Millar has seemed philosophical about the outcome.
He offered no comment on the ruling, and in the past has said that while he thought a personal case stood a good chance of success, he had “a lot of respect” for British Cycling’s performance director, Dave Brailsford, and didn’t want “to cause any grief or negative press.”
Although Millar is one of Britain’s top cyclists, the BOA rule meant that he’d never wear a Team GB uniform at the Olympics. Somewhat perversely, since it was a BOA rule specifically about the Olympics, Millar was not barred from representing Great Britain at the world championships or Commonwealth Games, both of which he has done since his suspension, and which raised the question of why it was OK for him to represent Britain at those events but not the Olympics. But I digress.
The CAS ruling may well have zero effect on Millar’s chances to make the 2012 British Olympic team. As much as Mark Cavendish has voiced his wish that Millar be on the team, British Cycling has the luxury of a lot of prospective talent for the road and time-trial teams, and may still have other ideas.
In a twist, Millar’s sister and former spokeswoman, Fran, works in public relations for British Cycling and previously handled media relations for Sky Pro Cycling, a team for which he can never ride because they have a policy against hiring any rider found guilty of doping. Millar went so far as to post on Twitter to please not ask his sister about the ruling.
The ruling is significant not for its relation to any past cases but because it’s one of WADA’s first major efforts to enforce real compliance with the code (this case stems from a previous, U.S. case about a similar IOC-wide rule). The IOC is a signatory, as is every national Olympic governing body and the governing bodies—international and national—of every Olympic sport, summer and winter.
Even though the BOA bylaw in question predates WADA’s existence by roughly a decade, because it’s a signatory, it must abide by the code, which sets down minimum penalties that become, in effect, maximum penalties as well—mandatory sentencing.
But the rules are in place to prevent a governing body from going too soft on an offender (something that seems to still happen, as in the case of Gregory Bauge). On the other, they also help prevent a kind of double-jeopardy, where an athlete must continue to pay for his actions long after he’s served his suspension.
Reaction to the verdict was mixed, even among Millar’s possible teammates on Team GB. Geraint Thomas, for one, said the BOA rule should’ve been upheld. And back in January, Brad Wiggins told the BBC that “from a moral point of view, from what cycling is trying to achieve, from what cycling’s been through the last few years, for what the Olympics stand for, he should never be able to do the Olympics again.”
Respectfully, I don’t agree.
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