The Way I See It
WHAT is the IAAF trying to do in stripping Mary Decker Slaney of the 1,500-meter silver medal she won in the 1997 world indoor championships? Slaney not finished
with IAAFThis foolishness comes three years after the international body began investigating America's greatest female middle distance runner over the results of a doping test everybody knows is inconclusive with women over 30.
In finding the 40-year-old Slaney guilty of having an unacceptably high testosterone level, the IAAF has imposed a "retroactive ban" of two years. That was up, technically, in June 1998.
The gods of Monte Carlo are wiping off the books every performance by Slaney in that two-year period, including her Olympic competition in Atlanta, her second-place finish in the 1996 Waikiki Mile, as well as her superb mile and 1,500-meter performances early in 1997.
Gee, I wonder, can the timing have anything to do with the fact that Slaney's attorneys recently filed suit against the IAAF?
Backed into a corner with USA Track and Field's top guns firing away in Slaney's defense, the IAAF seems to have decided to pull the pin in desperation.
And what is the point, except to leave this woman's remarkable career forever tainted?
SLANEY'S late-career comeback in 1996 reignited the sport. She received a rousingly emotional ovation in qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team.
As she entered 1997 and nearly won the world indoor title in the 1,500 meters in Europe, everyone was anxious to see how far the resurrected heroine could take it.
But the IAAF, acting through USA Track and Field, put a halt to her inspirational comeback on the eve of June 1997's USATF national championships in Indianapolis.
The USATF ratified the IAAF suspension of Slaney at the time, but in September cleared her for competition.
That's when the war between the federations began.
The IAAF challenged the decision of the USATF and initiated arbitration in January 1998.
In January of this year, the IAAF - which will gladly tell you it serves no master - arrogantly ruled that there was no need to prove Slaney had used an illegal substance.
Nope. All they had to do was show her testosterone-epitestosterone ratio was over 6:1.
STUDIES show, and even the IAAF's experts agree, there are various factors which can cause that in a woman Slaney's age, including illness, birth control pills, or alcohol. Bacterial degradation of the test sample can also do it. It's far from a fool-proof test, but it can destroy an athlete's reputation.
Unable to even call witnesses on their behalf, the USATF and Slaney pulled out of arbitration with the IAAF this month.
What the Slaneys want is for the IAAF to scrap the T-E test on behalf of all women athletes who might become ensnared by it. They also want a sincere apology for the hell they've been put through since 1996, and unspecified damages.
The only reason the IAAF wants to preserve the flimsy testing method is to prevent a dambreak of lawsuits from other suspended women like Sandra Patrick Farmer and Uta Pippig.
But Slaney has already lit the fuse to blow that dam, and she has no intention of snuffing it out.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.