World of Chig   

22.3.02

Ski Shun Day


[Chig steps back for a second to laugh at his own hilarious headline and wonder why he is not writing for the tabloids...]
I'm not the only one pondering the fate of Alain Baxter today, although Buni's reason's may be different(!) The 'disgraced skier' is being trundled around TV and radio studios like a startled lamb on a PR offensive. The thing about PR though, is that you need to have A Message, and preferably a very simple one, for public consumption. Poor Alain doesn’t seem to know what his message is. A TV reporter, asking him if he had received a list of banned substances before the Olympics, caught him out yesterday (as shown on the TV news). (Alain said his doctor probably had it, but he hadn’t seen it, which is just so unlikely for a top class athlete.) Today, he was on Radio 5 Live, in Nicky Campbell’s studio, and the calls and e-mails they were getting were apparently split between support and condemnation. When Campbell asked him quite bluntly if he had ever taken drugs for recreational purposes, he was VERY hesitant before saying no. A caller advised him to drop his protest now before his whole life gets raked over by the tabloids, and I would have to agree. He made a stupid mistake, now let it go.

If a British athlete had come fourth in an event, and this drug doubt had hit the bronze medallist from another country, we would be calling for their head, not just their medal. We can’t just say, ‘oh, but he’s British’ and expect the rules not to be applied, can we?

I do find myself asking though, if Vick’s inhalers DON’T give you an amphetamine rush, why on Earth did I find myself on dancefloors in the early 90s with people, including myself, who were snorting them? They certainly seemed to heighten the ecstasy experience at the time!

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