By MIKE ULMER -- Toronto Sun
SYDNEY -- Go ahead, manipulate the good burghers of the International Olympic Committee like the puppets that they are.
When, for unfathomable reasons, the IOC halved Javier Sotomayor's two-year ban for using cocaine at the Pan Am Games last year, the Cuban high jumper proved no earthly standard of justice applied to him.
But yesterday, shortly before most Canadians rose for breakfast, a few moments after Russian Sergey Kliugin glided over the bar at 2.35 metres, through a pleasant mist, the wind turned and the rain came with a force it has not shown in weeks.
No one touched Kliugin's mark. The elements made 2.35 as high as a mountain and we now know the Gods of the ancient Olympics carry a grudge with about the same zeal as Gordie Howe. Misses were tallied and Sotomayor was named the silver medallist. Canadians Mark Boswell and Kwaku Boateng finished sixth and 12th. They were two out of a handful of the world's best jumpers caught in the celestial crossfire aimed at Javier Sotomayor.
Sydney offered Sotomayor, who holds the world record at 2.45 metres, a global opportunity to explain his Winnipeg test and a subsequent test that again fingered him as a cocaine user.
And here was where Javier Sotomayor, who jumps as if tethered to a cloud, showed himself to be the smallest, most earthbound of men.
"I was the victim of something that did not happen," he said. "I was the person affected. I have robbed nothing."
When asked about the cocaine, he responded as the privileged usually do, by attacking the process.
"As far as the second test goes ... first of all it is a substance that is not tested for in our competition. Second, the laboratory sent the results without the permission of our federation. All of a sudden the (the failed test) appears and there is a permission to test for that. The permission was back-dated from the date at the laboratory. There were wrongly marked samples and they did not reach the laboratory correctly.
"I've never lost my honour," Sotomayor said. "Some people have accused me, but on a personal level, I felt like the victim. I have been doing this for 17 years and won many competitions. I have never used any types of substances to do this."
In his mind, the use of cocaine was recreational and unconnected to his performance on the track and he probably is right. Cocaine wouldn't help you clear a bar anymore than Vicks Vapo-Rub.
I do not condemn Javier Sotomayor for taking cocaine. If you argue that drug addiction is a medical phenomenon, you will get no quarrel from me. I find merit in the notion that whatever a grown man or woman chooses to ingest is his or her own business. Sotomayor never has been arrested, civil law does not apply.
But there is, nonetheless, an athletic standard and that standard has to be applied fairly. Right now, a Canadian equestrian rider named Eric Lamaze is at home for taking cocaine after he was initially told in error that his Olympics were over. Canadian Olympic officials, to their credit, would not take Lamaze back.
Four athletes have been drummed out of the Games for banned drugs. The report last night that American shot putter C.J. Hunter tested positive for steroids has tainted the Games' biggest non-Aussie story -- the quest by his wife Marion Jones to win five gold medals.
The inability or unwillingness of the IOC to test for Human Growth Hormone means we will never know how many athletes stole their medals. We do know, Javier Sotomayor is one who did. He should not have even been allowed to compete.
So you tell me. With the mortals unwilling to deny Javier Sotomayor the gold medal, did the fates step in? And how did the highest jumper in human history still manage to lower the bar?
