We’ll have Dr. Gary Wadler of WADA chime on soon about this issue. Until then, Matt Rudy of GW has this excellent article pointing out the huge holes in the PGA Tour’s testing policy and the remarkable lack of transparency.
From the article:
“Steroid expert Dr. Charles Yesalis outlined for me a simple, inexpensive way for a PGA Tour player to gain 10 percent more clubhead speed — and up to 30 yards more carry on a tee shot — with a 5-percent testosterone cream that would be virtually undetectable in a random drug test.
The last piece came from PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, who during my interview with him was openly disappointed that the Tour was being put in a position to have to impugn the honesty of its players by conducting PED testing.
He said the Tour would do it — it had to, because any sport under consideration for the Olympics is required to have a testing program — but it wouldn’t necessarily announce any fines or suspensions that came as a result of failed tests.
Add it up and it seems like career journeyman Doug Barron’s one-year suspension for violation of the PGA Tour’s PED policy yesterday generates far more questions about potential PED use on the PGA Tour than it answers.”
We sure won’t get answers from Tim Finchem’s tour. But what an embarassment it would be if, come Olympics time, the IOC’s advanced testing procedures nail down a few stars that…OOPS!…slid by under the PGA Tour’s testing. It will be interesting to see if Finchem flies the coop and retires before the Olympics and such a potentially damaging revelation could come to light. Until he bucks up and stops hiding behind the game’s altruism instead of protecting it, his empty suit will be no better than Bud Selig’s or Donald Fehr’s on the issue of steroids.
