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If
you don’t mind, let’s talk about doping It is difficult not to talk
about doping today, both in a narrow sense and as a metaphor of an increasingly
more doped and polluted society. Doping in sport, doping in the environment,
doping in food, doping in the press, doping in school books, doping
on TV.....so let’s talk about it and talk about it in a narrow, literal
sense, but on condition that we keep the word doping ringing in our
ears and head, meaning I am (no longer) a sports journalist, you are
not (yet?) sports readers. OK? In any case I’ll start from way back
in the hope that my readers do not totally ignore the events related
to the doping scandal highlighted by the mass-media last November, just
as the Pope had finished celebrating the sportspersons Jubilee, starting
with the request of the Assistant Public Prosecutor of Forlì to prosecute
for conspiracy the heads of the famous or infamous Ferrara Research
Centre run by Professor Conconi, the biking pal of Romano Prodi. From
what the papers say, the investigations under way would seem to show
that for the past three of four years, many of our top athletes have
been illegally, illicitly doped in various ways: haemodoping, which
means playing about with their (own) blood, cleaned up and then re-oxygenated;
erythropoietin, read “epo”, currently in fashion among cyclists; adulterated
growth hormones, etc... Well: in September, 1982, in the waiting room
of Athens international airport, a group of journalists was jotting
down the declarations of the mid-distance runner, Alberto Cova, the
surprise winner, at the final sprint, of the 10,000 metres race at the
European Championships just staged in the brand new Olympic stadium
in the Greek capital (where the 2004 Games will be held...). Cova had
outbeaten Finnish and East German champions of the speciality, the latter
above all suspected of various types of doping according to legend -
and which later turned out to be true - associated with the so-called
“Leipzig suitcase”, from the name of the university that was supposed
to be transforming human athletes into more or less “junior” Frankensteins.
These declarations were obviously required by circumstance and prompted
by enormous and motivated satisfaction. But a reporter, sent by Repubblica,
taking advantage of the fact that haemodoping was not forbidden at the
time by the regulations (it was rather in fashion among cross-country
skiers, something spoken of but about which not much was known), asked
Cova, “Alberto, how much did a blood change, rejuvenating the corpuscles,
help you in this feat?” Cova replied that perhaps it had been important,
but it was best not to talk about it too much. The year after, Alberto
won the World Championships at Helsinki, two years after, the Los Angeles
Olympics... I remember the episode well because I was that reporter.
If only the matter had been given more thought at the time, if only
an investigation had been made, weighing up means and aims, risks and
advantages (haemodoping immediately became illegal), we should not be
eighteen years behind now....we should not be surprised by what is happening,
we should not be astonished by the considerations of the Public Prosecutor’,
who suspects Conconi and the Coni, not only assonant, the latter even
alliterate and contained in the surname of the former, of being in agreement
in pushing the man machine towards results at any cost. What I mean
is that these sort of things are not born under cabbages, exactly like
children, that at least a short history should be built up, to understand,
change, design scenarios. That doping in sport comes from that other
doping, and in the former as the latter, meaning a drug-addicted society
in the broadest sense possible, we must roll our sleeves up and not
hide our heads under the sand, enriched ostriches heading for disaster...
(traduzione Interpres sas-Giussano)
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