DID SHE OR DIDN'T SHE??

November 2, 2007

When I saw the headline about Martina Hingis having tested positive for cocaine, my first reaction was no way- - -let me tell you why:
Every time you play singles at a Grand Slam event, win or lose, you get tested. You give a urine sample and after a last match of any kind, sometimes you give blood as well. You know you will be tested.
You would either have to be really thick or very cocky to think you would not get busted if you were to do a line or smoke a little weed at a party. Mind you the penalty is the same for recreational use of drugs like cocaine and marijuana as it is for performance enhancing drugs like human growth hormones or blood doping(EPO). The penalty is the same for one puff of grass as it is for long term usage of steroids. Whether this is fair or not is another column.
There are two kinds of players:  The first kind is those who don't take any drugs---they are completely clean with a clear conscience yet still petrified that somehow your sample will test positive.
The other kind is the cheater. They wonder if this time they will get away with it again or if they will be caught. The innocent players can never be 100% sure there is nothing in their bloodstream. I will give you a couple of examples from my own career:
  Example #1- A few years ago, while on a practice court at the Australian Open, I mistakenly picked up someone else's bottle of what I thought was water and realized, after taking a couple of big gulps, that it had a sweet taste. I panicked-what is in this bottle? I took it to the doping control people, explained what happened, and they said there is nothing they could do. I kept a sample for a few months in case my A sample tested positive.  I figured I could take the bottle and tell them whatever I tested for-it is in here.
  Example #2- I was in Holland for a tournament the week before Wimbledon and walked into a juice bar to order my favorite juice and realized this was no ordinary juice bar-there ae several people smoking pot-as it is legal in Holland. I left immediately but wondered if there is any way I could test positive for a trace of marijuana in my system as it was quite smoky in  there.
  Example #3- I was at my mom's in the Czech Republic a couple of weeks before the Athens Olympics and since I had just arrived from the US, pretty jetlagged  I wanted to get a good night's sleep. My mom gives me a sleeping pill. I take a 1/4 of it, sleep like a baby. In the morning I realized-oh no- I have no idea what was in that pill. I wrote down the name of it and duly reported it at the signing in in Athens. As it turned out, we did not medal and were not tested and there was no problem. But I sure did worry. Of course the stupidity was mine for taking the pill in the first place. Still, it would have been a steep price to pay for that transgression. The point is you can get busted and be completely innocent.
Another way of testing positive is to have someone slip something in your food or drink. It would be easy to do an angry rival or crazed parent slips a "mickey" into your food or drink; this has happened with poison in fact. Or,  someone gets paid off at the player cafeteria and again puts something in your food-very simple. Or, as I suspect  might have been the case with Martina Hingis, she is at a party, maybe there are some drugs around, of course she says no. When she goes to the bathroom and someone thinks they are being cute, they drop a bit of the white stuff into her drink.
I have no idea if the urine sample could have been someone else's as I have no knowledge of what the chain of events is once the urine sample gets tested. Hingis and her lawyers sure seem to think that is a definite possibility. But how do you fight that and how can you prove that?
Or it might have been the right urine, but Martina H. never knowingly ingested coke. Again-how do you prove that?
It is easy to be cynical about athletes' denials. I, along with millions of fans, am completely disappointed and disgusted with Marion Jones. But let us remember that taking cocaine a few days before a match is not the same as a performance enhancing drug-at-but it is still against the rules. It would have been less damaging for Martina H. to come clean (so to speak) and own up to the fact that she used the drug at a party. But of course that would make sense only if she is truly guilty.
Despite her excellent tennis career, no matter what Hingis did or did not do, when you google her name, Hingis and cocaine are now tied together. This is not a way to end a career. And if Martina H. really did not take the stuff, that is the true shame of it all.