LOGAN TAKES HARD LINE WITH SUPPLEMENT MAKERS
By David Monti
(c) 2009 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - used with permission
In
a speech today in Scottsdale, Ariz., at a gathering of the dietary
supplement and healthy food industries, USA Track & Field CEO Doug
Logan took a hard line with supplement makers over performancing
enhancing drugs.
"Performance-enhancing drugs are threatening to
choke the life out of the sport that I serve and love," said Logan.
"And in many ways, the supplement industry has been assisting in
braiding the noose."
Logan explained that unlike professional
U.S. sports like baseball and football, where fans and journalists go
lightly on doping offenders, athletics can't afford drug positives
which cast a long shadow over the sport. He pointed out that athletes
like Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin and Tim Montgomery, who were once
revered by fans only to have their careers end in disgrace, helped give
the impression that the sport is dirty even if 99% of athletes are
clean.
"If our sport doesn't set a course of brazen, vocal
intolerance toward drugs, the viability of track and field on a
go-forward basis is compromised," he said.
Logan told supplement
makers that the time had come for their industry to be regulated, and
that offering products which could be guaranteed to be free of
performance-enhancing drugs was paramount. Athletes, he said, had
become afraid to take legitimate supplements because of the fear that
they could be tainted. He cited the case of Ergopharm, a supplement
manufacturer and distributor, recently raided by federal agents. A
former BALCO chemist, Patrick Arnold, was working there and authorities
were trying to determine if he had put banned substances their products.
"Now,
let me get this straight," said Logan. "Why in the world would a
manufacturer of safe and healthy products hire a chemist who served
three months in prison in 2006 in connection with the BALCO case?"
Logan, who began his term as CEO last July, did not mince words about those who would taint his sport through chemistry.
"I
have two words for any person who uses, promotes or tacitly endorses
the use of drugs by any athlete. GET OUT! Get out of our sport and
out of our competitions."
NOTE: The full text of the speech can be read here: http://www.usatf.org/about/leadership/ShinSplintsBlog/ --Ed.
ENDS
Here is the usatf release on it
Logan speaks, blogs about doping and supplements
USATF
CEO Doug Logan on Thursday spoke to a gathering of the dietary
supplement and health-food industries, delving into the realities of
doping and supplements. His latest "Shin Splints" blog, entitled
"Braiding the noose," provides the full text of that speech. To read
the blog, visit httphttp://www.usatf.org/about/leadership/ShinSplintsBlog/
About USA Track & Field
USA
Track & Field (USATF) is the National Governing Body for track and
field, long-distance running and race walking in the United States.
USATF encompasses the world's oldest organized sports, some of the
most-watched events of Olympic broadcasts, the #1 high school and
junior high school participatory sport and more than 30 million adult
runners in the United States.
For more information on USATF, visit
www.usatf.org