I spent a few days trying to decide if I wanted to write this article or not. That’s not because it’s going to be risqué, overly controversial, or inappropriate. My debate was happening because it’s about the current drug situation happening in Olympic weightlifting, and I’m specifically talking about the re-tests of the urine samples from the last two Olympic Games (2008 and 2012) which have resulted in massive positive tests, suspensions, and scandal.
 
I’ve written a few short articles about this for the Catalyst website, and Greg Everett has written a bit about it, too. The main reason I wavered on writing this piece is not wanting to beat a dead horse. The whole situation has been discussed ad nauseam, and I don’t want to keep drilling it into the ground if our readers (you) are wanting to hear about something else.
 
However, a conversation I had the other day sparked my interest, and I’ve been replaying it in my head ever since. That’s where this article comes from.
 
First of all, let’s back up slightly and make sure you all know exactly what I’m talking about. Earlier this year (2016), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) decided to re-test athlete urine and blood samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. The athletes at these Games were tested, and they passed the tests and won their Olympic medals. Got it so far? Okay, you might not know this, but after each Olympic Games is over and the drug testing is all done, WADA keeps the urine and blood samples from the athletes. In other words, they’ve got a freezer full of drug testing samples that were collected from athletes as far back as 2008.
 
Over the last eight years, there have been some major advances in drug testing technology. To state it plainly, WADA has developed much tougher drug tests that can detect performance enhancing drugs much better than they could in 2008 or 2012. So the IOC and WADA decided that instead of simply using these tough new drug tests on all future Olympians, they also want to go back in time and re-test athletes from several years ago. And that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for the past few months. They’ve taken those old urine and blood samples they collected from athletes at the past two Olympics, pulled them out of the freezer, and re-tested them with the killer new testing procedures.
 
What were the results? Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last month or two, you probably already know. Multiple Olympic medalists from 2008 and 2012, including several of the biggest superstars in the sport, showed up positive for performance enhancing drugs in the re-tests. The weightlifting world has been watching with its collective jaws dropped. These athletes who got popped on the re-tests have had their Olympic medals stripped, and they’ve also been banned from competition. That means no Rio Olympics.
 
That’s the situation. Now, let me get back to that recent conversation I mentioned…the one that gave me the idea for this article. I was talking to a former world-class athlete about this whole mess, and she told me she disagrees with the re-testing of athletes from several years ago. She thinks it’s wrong to go back in time and do what the IOC and WADA are doing. To paraphrase her words, “These athletes took their drug tests, they passed them, they competed, and they won. The past is the past. Move forward and use the new tests on all future athletes, but don’t go back and punish people from eight years ago.” She was a drug-free athlete who strongly supports clean sport, by the way.
 
We talked about this for quite a while, and I still don’t think we came to a solid resolution about it. So I want to write about it and get you all involved in the conversation. What do you think? Is it right or wrong to re-test athletes from the past and punish them if they come up positive?
 
Trying to see it from both sides…

I think it’s pretty important to look equally at both sides of a controversy if you want to come up with a solid opinion about it. So I’ll try to do that here.
 
The drug-free athletes who lost to the drugged athletes: Right away, I’ll acknowledge that this is the side of the argument I have the easiest time sympathizing with, because this was me during my competitive career in weightlifting. I was a lifetime drug-free athlete. Now, you have to understand what that means in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. The embedding of drugs in this sport is so deep and powerful, it creates a very definite barrier with the athletes. You can only rise so high in this sport as a clean athlete. At some point, you simply can’t compete with the drug users anymore. Drugs are effective, people. They take athletes to a point that can’t be reached on a clean basis.
 
If I was an athlete who competed in the 2008 or 2012 Olympics drug-free, I would feel absolutely wonderful about the recent re-tests and suspensions. My opinion would sound something like this, “I played by the rules. I didn’t take drugs. I competed fair and square, but I lost to a bunch of cheaters who broke the rules and got away with it.” Come on, people. It’s impossible to argue with this perspective, unless you just openly support cheating and lying. And if you’re that kind of person, your opinion doesn’t matter anyway.
 
To the clean athletes, this would feel like a long overdue reward for doing the right thing and staying drug-free. That’s the way I’ve felt throughout this whole scandal. I never competed in the Olympics, but you can trust me…I competed at a high level against some athletes who were taking drugs. It was an open secret, in most cases. It’s hard to describe just how frustrating and negative the whole situation is. So if somebody came to me and said, “Guess what? The cheaters who beat you ten years ago finally got popped, and you’re going to be awarded an Olympic gold medal,” I would be smiling and giggling like a ten year-old girl.
 
The drugged athletes who won medals in 2008/12 but got popped on the retests: In this case, I have to admit it’ll be difficult for me to completely step inside the heads of these athletes, because as I just said above, this isn’t the perspective I personally come from. However, I’ve had this discussion with a lot of people lately and heard their viewpoint, so let me say what I think the outlook of these athletes would be.
 
It would probably sound something like this, “First of all, I played the game and won. I beat the competition, and I passed my drug test. There’s a statute of limitations on most crimes, and this is no different. Plus, how do you know the other athletes who placed lower than me are all clean? If you’re going to take my gold medal away and give it to the athlete who placed 2nd behind me, how do you know that athlete was clean?”
 
The part of this argument that I actually think holds water is the part about the athletes who placed 2nd, 3rd, 5th or whatever possibly being just as dirty as the medalists who got popped. The only way I think it would be fair to strip and suspend the athletes who came up positive on the retests is if every athlete in the competition, from first to last place, was subject to the same tests. Think about it. If WADA only tested the athletes who placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and those athletes all got popped on the retests, and we then gave their medals to the athletes who placed 4th, 5th, and 6th but DIDN’T get tested…that’s not fair. We’ve got no way of knowing if the lower placers were clean. It’s entirely possible, especially in weightlifting, that everybody in the top 10 was dirty.
 
However, I don’t think this is what actually happens. I don’t know this for sure, but I’m pretty sure ALL athletes who compete in the Olympics get drug tested. I’ve spoken with coaches and athletes who have competed in the Games, and they all say this. Don’t go ballistic on this article if I’m wrong. Some of you might know more about this than me (although it’s unlikely). All I’m saying is I’m fairly certain all Olympic athletes get tested.
 
But then again, we all know drug tests aren’t completely reliable. Two of the most famous athletes in history, Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones, both passed every drug test they ever took. Neither of them ever tested positive. But they were eventually exposed as drug cheats when they were investigated later in their lives, and they both publicly admitted they were dirty when they were winning their championships. So if that’s true, how do we know if ANYBODY is clean?
 
We don’t know for sure, and we never will. This is probably the hardest thing about being involved in a sport where there’s a large level of drug use. You never honestly know who’s playing by the rules and who’s cheating. Armstrong and Jones eventually went down, but we all know damn well they’re not the only cheaters who slipped through the cracks and got away with it. Somebody’s word of honor doesn’t cut it, and it all results in a predicament that makes you want to take a shower because it’s so slimy and corrupt.
 
So where do we go from here?
 
One of the reasons I’m supporting the efforts of the IOC and WADA to retroactively test athletes is because I actually think this might be one of the few moments in weightlifting history when there’s a little hope for clean lifters. We now live in a world where you can cheat, win, get away with it, and then get busted and publicly crucified ten years later. Drug users have to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders and lying in bed awake at night because they know their titles are never safe.
 
Do I think this is going to completely stop drug use in sports? No way. That will never happen. But do I think this could put a huge dent in the advantage of the drug users? Yeah, I do. The fallout from this scandal, along with the even bigger scandal involving the ban on almost all Russian athletes because of Russia’s government-sponsored drug program, has sent shockwaves to the very core of the sport. The cheating juicers are literally being hunted down and picked off by the IOC and WADA, even after they’ve enjoyed years of getting away with what they did. Entire countries are being kicked out of the Olympic Games, with their reputations and public images being tarnished forever. Russia, one of the great sports powerhouses of the world, is going to have one hell of a time recovering from this blow. Do I think Russia will clean up after this? No way. But I’m damn sure they’ll be limping around licking their wounds for a while. That’s good enough for me.
 
Listen, some of you disagree with everything I’m saying because you think sports should get rid of drug testing and just let everybody juice their brains out to level the playing field. Okay, you’re entitled to your opinion and I respect it. But even if drug testing was tossed in the toilet and the Olympics became open season for drug users, some athletes would still make the decision not to go down that road because of health concerns, personal integrity, and a variety of other factors.
 
And I think it’s important to keep fighting the battle, no matter how difficult it is. I support the retesting and suspension of athletes from previous years who cheated. If somebody committed a crime against me, like stealing my car or raping my sister, and they got away with it without punishment, I would spend the rest of my life wanting justice. And if some magical legal maneuver could be pulled twenty years after the crime that finally convicted and imprisoned these scumbags, I would feel great about it. I believe in justice, regardless of how long it takes to serve it. Punishing cheaters and rewarding athletes who played fair…that’s justice. No amount of dialogue, rationalization, or philosophical rambling is going to change that fact. As an athlete who competed drug-free, I’ll take any little moment of fairness and hope I can find. It might not stop the whole drug parade, but it’ll dump a hell of a lot of rain on it. And that’s better than nothing.