The new playing field
Drug tests will be tough. The sun is brutal and Anti-Americanism could sway judges and crowds
ATHENS--You'd think these would be the most familiar playing fields on Earth to Olympic athletes. Shot-putters will heave their 16-pound spheres in the very temple in Olympia where the games were founded in 776 B.C. Marathoners will start their 26 miles to Athens from the spot in the town of Marathon where Phidippides set out in 490 B.C. And archers will shoot their arrows in the stadium where the Olympics were revived in 1896.
But when the games begin on August 13, Olympians--especially the U.S. contingent--will step onto a new, and in many ways more challenging, field. It's not just because of quirks like Greece's one-of-a-kind white-water course, filled with eye-stinging, harder-to-paddle salt water instead of fresh water. The competition will be tenser because of an unprecedented crackdown on doping. Most disturbingly, thanks in part to the global unpopularity of America's war in Iraq, for the first time in history the U.S. team could become the world's whipping boy--and bear the added burden of performing before unfriendly crowds and judges.
Perhaps the single most important test for American athletes is a mental one: getting fired up to do their best in front of a crowd that may be rooting against them. Polls indicate that Europeans and Arabs have adopted harshly negative views of America since the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. American athletes have been booed, jeered, and even spat upon in recent international meets.
Such hostile crowds can undermine performance. A study by economists at Duke and Baylor universities found that basketball teams are more than one third more likely to win in front of hometown crowds. So don't expect the U.S. team to match its 101-medal count from Atlanta. Indeed, anti-Americanism may have already helped dash some Olympic dreams. The U.S. soccer team missed its chance to play in Athens when it lost a February match to Mexico in front of a Guadalajara crowd chanting "Osama, Osama." Says Nat Borchers, a defender for the U.S. team: "We played Honduras, Panama, and Canada, and each game the Mexican fans would come to cheer against us. It can be disheartening."
Boo power. How do you beat the jeers of the crowd? Repeating catchphrases, such as "rhythm and flow," that help you concentrate on the task at hand is one method the Americans are practicing. Using boos as a motivator is another. Erik Vendt, who will swim the freestyle and individual medley, has learned to thrive off gibes that now greet him at European meets. "I like it," says the 23-year-old Massachusetts native, who wants to become a Navy SEAL. "There's nothing wrong with being a villain."
Unless the judges agree with the crowd. Some coaches expect to see anti-American bias in the judging of sports such as diving, boxing, and gymnastics. "We will face organized and aggressive anti-American feelings fueled especially by France," asserts Bela Karolyi, the longtime gymnastics coach, whose wife, Marta, now directs the U.S. women's team. He fears former Soviet satellites may take advantage of this new European unity to revive "bloc voting" : swapping votes with judges from neighboring countries to raise their athletes' scores.
American athletes are training to overcome this hurdle as well. Andre Ward, a 20-year-old light heavyweight who is one of the top U.S. boxers, is practicing "straight punches that the judges can see. It would be horrible to get to this point and not be judged fairly."
Another kind of unfairness, however, may finally be on its way out. For the past 40 years or so, it has been almost--but not quite entirely--impossible for athletes to break into the very top ranks without using drugs, charges Charles Yesalis, a Pennsylvania State University professor and coauthor of Performance-Enhancing Substances in Sport and Exercise. He argues that official opposition to doping has long been lip service, since broadcasters, advertisers, and audiences all like athletes who set amazing new records. "The vast majority of world records have been drug assisted," says Yesalis. Many women's track, weightlifting, and swimming records, for example, are still held by East Germans, who were fed steroids, and by Chinese athletes, whose teammates have been discovered with vials of until now undetectable drugs like human growth hormone (HGH). Marion Jones, the top U.S. long-jumper and a member of a record-holding relay team, is battling allegations she benefited from THG, a designer steroid developed by the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO).
The men's records are just as suspect. American Tim Montgomery, another alleged BALCO customer, holds the world record in the 100-meter dash (although he didn't make the U.S. Olympic team this year). This spring, world time-trial champion cyclist David Millar of Britain lost his chance to compete for gold in Athens when he was caught with EPO, a drug that boosts red blood cells and endurance.
Officials say the ongoing BALCO investigation and a ratcheting up of drug testing prove they really are serious about making the competition cleaner. Forty-nine physicians will test not only every winner but more than 30 percent of all the competitors. They'll check urine, and in some cases blood, for much more than the standard steroids, hormones, and amphetamines. For the first time, Olympic athletes will be tested for HGH, EPO, THG, and even transfusions of their own blood, which can boost stamina. "Years before, we were behind in the science," says Christina Tsitsimpikou, section manager of the doping control services for Athens 2004. "Now we have the means" to catch dopers.
The crackdown gives hope to many athletes that the competition may be fairer. But some clean athletes worry that the anti-doping crusade could go overboard. Every elite competitor is painfully aware of the revocation of the 2000 all-around gymnastics gold from 16-year-old Andreea Raducan of Romania. She had taken a cold medication containing a trace of a compound that was then on the banned list but has since been taken off, because it has been proved not to enhance performance.
Dirty water. A growing number of athletes wonder if their competitors will use the zero-tolerance policy to sabotage them. Adam Nelson, America's top shot-putter, says he now casts a suspicious eye over food and drink. "We don't pick up a bottle of water after it has left our sight" for fear a competitor might drop a banned substance into it. Those who flunk tests have sometimes blamed sabotage (although it's never been proved). And it would be an effective way to eliminate a competitor. The standard penalty for flunking a drug test is a two-year competition ban.
After dealing with politics and doping, athletes will be relieved to run out on the track or jump into the pool. For the most part, athletes who have tested the athletic venues now being completed by the Greeks have been effusive in their praise. But some athletes will face unprecedented challenges because of Greece's hot summers, budget constraints, and seaside geography.
Greek heat--last August saw daily highs in the upper 90s--threatens all endurance athletes with heatstroke. And it may have other surprising effects. Swimming records are generally set in water between 78 and 81 degrees, but Athens's roofless lap pool could heat up beyond that. All swimmers will be affected equally, but hot water could prove costly to a select few. Professionals like America's eight-medal hopeful Michael Phelps will earn $1 million from Speedo for a record medal count, with extra cash for breaking world records.
At least the pool has fresh water. Because Athens is hot, dry, and lacking in big, steep rivers, Greek engineers designed a 300-some-yard artificial pretzel of man-made boulders and filled it with the salt water they have in abundance. Not only are the rapids thrilling Class 5-ers (the highest class), but paddlers may have to negotiate them nearly blindly, says Joe Jacobi, who won gold in 1992 and will compete again this summer. Salt water foams up, hiding rocks and slalom gates, and it can sting the eyes and fog up goggles.
But the challenge excites Jacobi. He's so familiar with his home course on Tennessee's Ocoee River that he knows every tree. At the ancient home of the Olympics, all the athletes will test their mettle in new ways. "There are going to be some very dramatic moments," Jacobi predicts.
Perhaps the most dramatic turn of events would be an Olympics in which the 202 lands represented manage to get along despite the tensions. "We haven't experienced anything like this before," says Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of the anti-American climate, and he should know--he was captain of the U.S. judo team at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and trained competitors for Olympiads during the Vietnam and Cold War eras. Nonetheless, Campbell is hopeful that the spirit of the games will prevail. "If we ever needed the Olympics," he says, "it is now."
With Rachel Dry
This story appears in the August 9, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.