Stage play reveals pressure athletes face to use drugs
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Version 0 of 1. One of Britain’s leading experts on doping in sport, and an adviser to a new play on cheating among athletes, has warned that British sports stars are under pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs in the wake of the country’s Olympic success. Michele Verroken, former director of ethics and anti-doping at UK Sport and a campaigner for improved drugs testing, spoke this weekend of her fears for elite athletes before the premiere of a disturbing drama that exposes the amount of normalised drug-use among top competitors. “Rio was very inspiring and there was a crazy medal tally for us, for whatever reason, whether partly that the Russians were not there in numbers or because of more robust testing. But the UK is not beyond suspicion,” said Verroken, who hopes the new play, Deny, Deny, Deny, will highlight the growing threat to British sporting integrity. “Olympian athletes are now doing everything they can to stay up there. Most may just be using more science to analyse their data and lose weight, but we are hugely in danger of not giving people confidence that sport is clean and is fair.” Deny, Deny, Deny is written by a former TV reporter, Jonathan Maitland, who is already acclaimed for two recent plays on controversial themes: Dead Sheep, about the Thatcher cabinet in 1989, and An Audience with Jimmy Savile, which examined the way the paedophile TV personality evaded detection. Maitland’s new subject is the intense relationship between a ruthless coach and a talented athlete and Deny, Deny, Deny, which opens in London on 3 November, shows the increasingly blurred line between sensible preparation for a competition and cheating. “It’s the first rule in the doper’s handbook: if you’re accused of cheating, deny it. Then deny it again. And carry on denying it until you can’t,” said Maitland this weekend. “It is important because sport is a very emotional thing for those who play and those who watch it. It matters whether it is genuine sporting achievement or not.” The writer spoke to coaches and competitors, as well as to Verokken, and he found that some now regard athletic performance as a branch of the entertainment industry. A victory on the track or in the field, they argue, is no longer as simple as it looks. “It does become a form of entertainment and about keeping television viewers,” said Verokken. “We have a surfeit of British Olympians now and they will not all be able to make a living endorsing products or becoming television pundits. So it is competitive, even after you are an Olympian. I can see why Jess Ennis is retiring now rather than have that potential conversation about whether she is going to deliver the medals any more.” Broadcaster and retired British sprinter Jeanette Kwakye was technical consultant on the play and wants coaches and aspiring athletes to come along and consider the arguments. “The timing of this play could not be more apt, given the current status of doping in sport,” she said. “It is a subject close to my heart, having raced and competed against those who will cross the line of ethics to get to the finish line first.” The play is set in the near future and tells of Eve, a young athlete, who is offered a cutting-edge therapy by her charismatic coach. “The coach-athlete relationship fascinates me,” said Maitland. “There was a telling line in the book by Dwain Chambers [the British sprinter banned for doping], which said ‘Looking back, I now realise my coach was grooming me.’ When I read that I knew there was a play in the subject.” Although the drama is set in a world of technological developments yet to come, Maitland has still had to update the script. “I added a line recently about the wisdom of handing out honours to athletes before knowing all the relevant facts,” he said. “I’ve been lucky too: I came up with a sub-plot about the theft of an athlete’s medical records by a Russian computer hacker and then, a few weeks later, the same thing happened in real life.” Verokken believes the real peril is a fresh expectation that top British athletes are on a conveyor belt to the Olympic podium. “There are definitely some coaches and even doctors who are looking for their moment of glory more than anything else, and they get close to the team and persuade them they are not breaking the rules as they are written. “The whole supplement market is predicated on that,” she said. “It will be easy for sport to lose its way when what really matters is competition on the day. You can see what has happened by the way some sports have developed so quickly.” There should be a way to make a clearer distinction between athletes who were ill-advised and those who are deliberately cheating and denying allegations in the hope they will avoid punishment, she said. “The problem is there is no precise science for testing available yet and different laboratories have different standards and resources. Even our anti-doping programmes cannot keep up once we are talking about enhancing surgery, such as the laser eye work that is already happening.” Young athletes, said Verokken, need to be helped to rediscover “that sport is about disappointment as well as success”. “Otherwise we will soon an even bigger separation between those who participate for fun and the world of elite sport,” she said. |