Aussies CAN get beaten fair and square

Yesterday, on every bit of news I heard about Grant Hackett 'losing' the 1500m swimming event at the Beijing Olympics, there was mention of how the gold medallist, Tunisia's Oussama Mellouli, had previously been banned for a 'doping violation'. Report after report referred to Mellouli taking a 'banned substance', insinuating that he was a filthy, dirty cheat who stole the gold medal from Our Grant. After all, if an Australian or American didn't win it's practically evidence of shenanigans, right? Especially with a name like Oussama, a name that happens to sound like that of a well-known terrorist.

Given that Mellouli had been given a light penalty for the violation and the Australian media studiously avoided any mention of what the 'banned substance' that caused his 'doping violation' actually was, suggesting the offense was so slight that the facts would detract from the narrative they were inventing, I decided to look it up.

Mellouli took an Adderall. Adderall is a performance-enhancing substance, if by performance we mean "staying up all night to finish an assignment". Which is what, as a university student at the time, Mellouli claims to have been doing when he took the Adderall. It's a drug most commonly used to treat ADHD, but is commonly misused by students for this purpose. God knows there've been times I could have done with one... As far as I know, Adderall does not impact positively on athletic performance, let alone two days after consumption. Any athlete would know that swallowing anything without first triple-checking whether it contains any substance banned under anti-doping rules is a dumb idea, but it happens. Even to Australians. And don't we get our knickers in a knot over how silly those rules are in such cases?

I'm glad Grant Hackett and Australian team coach Alan Thompson didn't see fit to get stuck into the mud-slinging. There are probably thousands of athletes at the Beijing games who are taking performance-enhancing drugs. Most of them won't get caught, but the reaction of the media to 'our' champ being beaten was petty and smacked of sour grapes.