I cheated once.
In a race.
I’m not proud of it.
It happened. And I have no defence.
I also have no way of undoing it.
***
It’s early 2004, and I coming into the second-best shape of my life, if there is such a thing. In a few weeks’ time I’ll make the Irish team for the World University Cross Country Championships (I don’t know it yet, but that’ll be the pinnacle of a protracted but unremarkable running career). I’m at Camp Hill in Liverpool, taking part in one of the Merseyside Colleges Cross Country League races, a low-key, mid-week, mixed-gender cross country series held in various parks across Merseyside throughout the winter.
I’m doing well in the league. I’ve been mixing it with all but the top lads. I’ve even taking a few scalps along the way.
But there’s a problem with today’s race. The course isn’t marked out as well as it should be. Someone’s forgotten to place a flag in the corner of a field. The volunteer helping direct the runners is timidly pointing us diagonally across the field to the other corner, cutting 50 or 60 metres off the course each time.
But that’s fine. I’ve run this course before. I run the correct course. But those in front don’t know any better. They take the shortest route. Every time I start to make ground on the lads in front, they pull away on that part of the course. The competitor in me is a little bit frustrated. But there’s more to it than that. I start to feel a bit of a fool. A little miss do-gooder running the full course when it feels like nobody else is. On the final lap I cave. I follow the leaders.
But those behind me don’t. They’ve run the full race.
I don’t catch any of those in front over the final lap. And I more than keep my gap on those behind (no surprize given that I’ve run a shorter race than them). I finish seventh.
My friend finishes one place behind me. He is furious. He’s sure he could have beaten me today had I not cheated. He knows that I know the course and that I had no reason to cut that corner. But more importantly he expects more of me and I’ve let him down. I’ve let myself down.
I know I had the beating of him today. I’m sure of it.
But neither of us will really know. There is no way of knowing.
It’ll bother me for years to come. In the 2020s I’ll still be thinking about it. I may even write about it then!
***
I can never undo what I did that day. But I can learn from it. Honest and integrity have always been important to me, but in the aftermath of that race, I realised just how important they were, and why.
But I also learned how easy it is, in the heat of the moment, to make a mistake. How easy it is to justify something, just because everyone else is doing it. And how difficult it can be to do the right thing when it looks to you as if you’re the only one doing so.
Had there been someone there to disqualify me, I’ve have paid my price, and could have got on with my life. Had there been someone making sure we were on the right track, it would never have been an issue to begin with. All I had was a decent friend to call me out.
***
As I said, integrity is important to me. And I’ve written before about how the doping in sport and the not talking about it breaks my heart. That was a few years ago. Things have changed. We’ve had the introduction of super shoes, the Russians aren’t around, and everyone has been training really hard through the pandemic. Nobody dopes any more.
Wait, what?
Think about it.
We don’t need to be fully paid-up members of the ‘they’re all doping; cheating is human nature’ side to recognise that advances in technology or a lack of competition for a couple of summers didn’t suddenly make the performances you watch any more believable.
“You know what, there’s shoes now that make me go faster; I’ll cut back on the EPO”, said nobody ever.
True, the old yardsticks are not relevant anymore (probably time to move to metres anyway), and we’ve had world records, or second-best performances, right across the track and field events. But the benefit that was denied for so long (why are you not respecting me and my performances; I still have to put on the shoes and run in them), are now being credited with improbably performance gains. And the resultant insatiable appetite for jaw-dropping performances has even allowed throwers – who obviously aren’t benefiting from carbon fibre plates - to make quantum leaps forward unquestioned.
The performances you watch aren’t any cleaner that those you watched 5, 10 or 15 years ago, it’s just a bit more difficult to spot the dubious ones.
Just the way Seb would have wanted it.
***
And it’s not just that we’ve been gorging on performances which are likely tainted but which seem somewhat less outlandish simply because of their abundance. There’s also the enabling. A not insignificant number of individuals who have doped themselves (and served bans) or who have been involved in doping regimes, continue to coach in the sport. Yes, there are arguments about individuals serving their time and having a right to earn a living. But if we really care about this sport and its integrity, how can we employ doping offenders on six-figure salaries to coach impressionable young adults? Yes, they might get ‘results,’ but at what cost?
And why would anyone who believes in clean sport want to work or be part of a system with a tainted reputation? True, it might be difficult to find a role at the highest level that isn’t in some way linked to doping or doping suspicions, but if we don’t make a stand now, that’s only going to get more and more difficult to do.
For future generations the choice may be a simple one: do performance sport and dope; or don’t do it at all. Maybe we’re already at that point. We’ve got to do something now. And wouldn’t taking a stand against doping offenders coaching be a half-decent place to start?
Either way we’ve got to show that we still care.
***
If I was a clean athlete, turning out top drawer performances at a serious rate, and people started to question my results, would I be hurt? Of course, I would. But if I was clean because it’s what I believe in – rather than just because I don’t want to be caught – then I’d be f*$king delighted that people still care; that whether or not my performances are clean still matters to people; that there is still some desire out there to clean up this sport and make it a better place for our children.
While the questions might not make a cheating athlete repent, I’d hope that as a clean athlete any outpouring of actually giving a feck might just help me continue doing what I do clean. That it would encourage me to continue to avoid cutting those corners, irrespective of whether I know others are doing so, or presume that those who are not might be.
We will never catch all the cheats. But, for the sake of clean athletes everywhere, we’ve got to put everything we can into trying. But most of all we’ve got to make it easier to do the right thing by having some actual repercussions for not doing so.
***
I’m grateful to Neil for calling me out that day in 2004. He was right. I know that now. I knew it then.
But I also know I could have beaten him fairly that day.
I just wish I had.
Not so that I could recall it now. But so that I could have forgotten it almost two decades ago.
And so that I could say that everything I’ve achieved in this sport, I’ve achieved fairly.
