Everyone deserves a second chance in life, including drug cheats

What you need to know:

  • Gatlin’s storming comeback performance raised more calls from fellow athletes, politicians and the sport’s administrators for life bans to be imposed on drug cheats.
  • No less than World Athletics president Sebastian Coe suggested that life bans for doping should now be reconsidered.

Talk of life bans for athletes found to have used prohibited performance-enhancing substances has been with us for sometime now.

Debate on this topic was particularly hot during the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London. But talk was already smouldering a year earlier when American speedster Justin Gatlin, one of the greatest sprinters of his generation, won the men’s 100 metres race at the American trials for 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games to secure a return to the global sports bonanza after serving a four-year ban for testing positive for exogenous testosterone.

His qualification was greeted with wild applause by the local crowd in Eugene watching the trials. But there was an anti-Gatlin social media storm with many going hysterical about a former doper back in competition, and winning.

Undaunted, Gatlin went on to claim silver medal in men’s 100m final in Rio before claiming the 100m world title in London, beating crowd favourite, undisputed global sprint king Usain Bolt, at the time the most treasured jewel in athletics.

May be it was that Gatlin rained on the great Bolt’s farewell race, or just the fact that he had cheated in his past - twice in fact - for he was, like a pantomime villain, roundly booed by the crowd at the London Stadium as he received his gold medal.

It did not matter that in his second doping offence, the American sprinter alleged it was a set up. Something to do with him having a dispute with his physician who then sabotaged him.

Gatlin’s storming comeback performance raised more calls from fellow athletes, politicians and the sport’s administrators for life bans to be imposed on drug cheats.

No less than World Athletics president Sebastian Coe suggested that life bans for doping should now be reconsidered.

Enter Kenya. The country has had its fair share of drug cheats. Delilah Asiago, who came back from a two-year ban to win the 2006 Dubai Marathon; Matthew Kisorio, one time the third fastest Kenyan over the half marathon, who served time twice for doping violations; multiple world cross country champion John Ngugi; multiple world champion Asbel Kiprop, who strenuously claims his innocence; 400m hurdler Francisca Koki; accomplished marathoners Ritah Cheptoo, Jemimah Sumgong, Susan Chepkemei. The list goes on, and on.

In their fight to clean the country’s sport, it was no surprise when Athletics Kenya chairman Jack Tuwei announced on Saturday that drug cheats would not be allowed to ever compete again when they finished serving their bans. Tuwei further stated AK, with the relevant bodies, was considering withdrawing passports of cheating (doping that is) athletes and having them sacked from their places of employment. Many work in the uniformed services.

Some have argued against life bans for the following reasons: That testing positive for drugs is not full proof that an athlete is intentionally cheating; that an athlete may have used a banned substance unintentionally; that the anti-doping authorities may get their testing all wrong. Imagine then wrongly condemning an innocent athlete for the rest of their lives. That would be a travesty of justice.

Blackstone's ratio in criminal law comes to mind: It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent party suffers.

And then looked at it from the other side, athletes embroiled in life ban cases will have every reason to fight their case. It would prove very expensive, in terms of compensation, to World Anti-doping Agency and concerned sports federations should they be proven to have got a doping case wrong.

But I would be reluctant to support a life ban for just one reason. Second chance.

Everybody deserves that in life. We sometimes make wrong decisions because of greed, desperation, recklessness, impunity, poor judgement, misinformation, ignorance, or whatever other human frailty that psychologists have studied in details, well beyond this column.

It is natural justice, and only fair, to be given a chance to restart our lives afresh after making a mistake hoping we have learnt a lesson rather than be condemned forever.
World Anti-Doping Agency President Witold Banka recently said: “When an offender has done the time, the sentence is considered to be served.”

Let us leave it at that, at least for first offenders.