Empfield offers radical new proposal
by Jaime La Ventura
This report filed April 1, 2005
Fresh off a behind-the-scenes effort to steer USA Triathlon out of the Olympic movement, former USAT board member and perennial triathlon gadfly Dan Empfield announced plans on Friday to seek passage of a USAT bylaw amendment to make USAT the first pro-drug national governing body (NGB) in the Olympic movement.
Empfield, irritated at Treasurer Jack Weiss for folding under the charismatic smile of USOC consigliere Jim Scherr at last month's board meeting, proposes that USAT scrap its mandated United States Olympic Committee drug testing program. Instead, says Empfield, who claims to have "2,000 signatures in the bank," wants everyone to recognize the hypocrisy of drugs in triathlon.
"Everyone's doing it," said Empfield from his high desert hideout in Southern California. "Instead of spending all this money fighting something so ingrained in our culture, why not legalize it, control it and even promote it? Right now we have an unequal playing field -- the majority who know how to hoodwink the tests and as a result go 10 percent faster than everyone else - and then the rest of us."
Empfield, who has sources inside both the USAT and the World Anti-Doping Agency, said: "We know USAT has targeted some of the faster age-group triathletes with out-of-competition testing later this season and we think that's unfair. These guys and gals typically have full-time jobs and going sub nine hours in Hawaii is impossible for a 45-year-old without a little help. To paraphrase Jose Canseco, who is to say that a little EPO or human growth hormone, if used in moderation and under medical supervision, is that bad? In fact, it might even be therapeutic."
Empfield's proposal - named after its date of formal submission: "The April 1st amendment" - to supply each USAT member with the soon-to-be-published "Endurance athlete's guide to performance enhancing drugs" and sell steroids, human growth hormone, amphetamines and EPO through the USAT website, with the profits from these sales plowed back into educating athletes "how to take this stuff so they don't kill themselves."
When asked how these USAT drug-sales efforts will comply with United States law, which bans the sale of such drugs without prescription, Empfield had a ready answer: "We'll have doctors on USAT staff who prescribe this stuff and work with our athletes to make sure it's safe."
Empfield cited some of the other benefits of "safe" drug use by triathletes: faster, more exciting races; no fallout from positive drug tests because there won't be any testing; increased drug company sponsorships; reduced costs by eliminating drug testing ($462,000 budgeted this season by USAT for drug testing) and lessening the risks of taking drugs without medical supervision.
"Heck'" says Empfield, "I'm just as anti-drug as anyone, but right now we're just tilting at windmills. If my 65-year-old neighbor knows how to cycle through a Belgian cocktail to avoid triggering a positive test, then for sure any pro worth his or her salt knows how to beat the tests and we're kidding ourselves if we think our sport is clean. Wake up! There are widely known online forums where athletes trade tips on how to avoid triggering positives. I'm just recognizing reality and trying to put to rest all this hypocrisy. Do you realize how much collectively we waste fighting drug use in sport? How much newsprint? How many tens of millions of dollars that would be better spent on fighting childhood obesity with clever grass roots sports programs?"
When challenged with the fact that adopting such a pro-drug stance could force USAT out of the Olympic movement -- admittedly one of Empfield's goals earlier this year - the creator of the triathlon bike and triathlon wetsuit just winked but didn't say anything. Then he added, "if our little effort can force the USOC -- and ultimately the IOC -- to wake up and look at this issue a little more objectively, then we've won."
USAT officials when contacted about Empfield's plans were incredulous. "He's really got that many signatures? Can he really be serious?!" exclaimed USAT board member Steve Locke.