SlowFatMaster wrote:
Well, one of Brianna's violations was at an airport. Rollins had already passed through airport security. The testers were not flying that day, so they were on the other side of security. In order to comply with the testers, Rollins would have had to exit security, give the sample, then go through security again, possibly risking a missed flight, a missed meet, etc.
So some of this testing stuff is crazy!
Two things.
1.) I'll concede that some of it IS crazy, in that the letter vs. spirit of the law often don't jive.
But, more importantly....
2.) Someone mentioned Risk Management. In your example, while it certainly would be potentially very costly to comply, athletes of this level need to have a hard line of what is worth forsaking everything else. Let's use your example, but substitute Coleman for Rollins. In my hypothetical, complying costs him a six-figure appearance fee, $25-50k in prize money, pissing off sponsors, and potentially finding himself in violation of his contract with one of those sponsors if this was mandated competition. On the other hand, you already have 2 strikes and know that a third could very well cost you a WC and the ultimate, the 2020 Olympics. Here's what he's faced with
A.) A very understandable (in terms of human nature) but short-sighted decision. Blow off the test and put yourself in the horribly unenviable position of not only the potential penalty itself, but even if things go your way, having to live with the tension and the uncertainty looming over your head until your appeal is heard. You justify it because other athletes have successfully won appeals. To me that's analogous to going to court to face a Must Appear traffic offense without hiring a lawyer because you know a guy who had a similar case and had his charges dropped when the officer didn't appear in court.
B.) Letting the "High School/College Big Dreamer" version of yourself chime in that "NOTHING and I mean NOTHING is worth risking the Olympics over". It's conservative and safe and you have the peace of mind of knowing that you complied and now don't have to worry about getting lucky on your appeal.
Here's my complete, potentially wishy-washy and self contradictory take....
The keyboard warrior crowd, along with the guys and gals with anything less than freakish talent, will always choose B because ".....because THE OLYMPICS". However, it's nowhere near that simple.
Even the most successful of track and field careers, particularly in the sprints, are notoriously short. The room for error is almost non-existent; the difference between "Mount Rushmore-level legendary status" and "Hoping To Get A Sprint Coach Position At A D1 Powerhouse To Pay The Bills After Age 30" is the absolute smallest fractions of a second.
An Olympic gold combined with the personality of anything other than a wet blanket probably means that person will be able to live off the monetary spoils of less than 10 seconds of work. Now back to that almost non-existent room for error. There is an endless list of totally mundane things that can cause the best guy in the world to end up a footnote in a sport that occupies a small niche anyway. Hotel bed too soft and your back gets out of wack, the physio you work with at the meet goes just a little too aggressively in his pre-meet ART treatment, your massage therapist misses the barely-existent adhesion in the low glute/high hamstring region, argued with your significant other the night before the semi and ran subpar meaning a less-than-preferable lane draw, accidentally use refined instead of raw sugar in your coffee the morning of the final making your stomach iffy so now your focus is just barely shifted from 100% on the race to 98% on the race and 2% on worrying about the potential damage this innocent absent-mindedness may cause.
All of those "oh cmon, get outta here., a REAL pro would never let any of that cost them an Olympic Gold" are very real because that REAL pro is infinitely more HUMAN than PRO. Combine any of these with two of your most dangerous rivals both having "can't explain it but everything just clicks" days and now you're that footnote.
Now, if you'd chosen option A, gone to the other meet, collected 100k in appearance fees, 50k in prize money, made a random contact through a friend of a sponsor that led to guaranteed speaking engagement contract deal where you're promised 15 appearances at 10k each for 10 years, AND won your appeal, that Olympic debacle would be painful but not financially crippling. But wait, that appeal wasn't guaranteed and maybe you'd lose it? Well, that sucks but you still came away with 1.65 million all stemming from that one meet. OH, there's also the chance that the reason you would've come up just short in our hypothetical Olympic scenario is because the "do or die" nature created by the circumstances put you in a bad headspace and the pressure got you juuuuust enough to cost you the gold.
If you're still reading, here comes the part where I acknowledge that those are a WHOLE lot of "if"s. Well guess what, that's the smallest piece of the tip of the biggest iceberg.
Now, when I quoted the post I did, it probably seemed like I was going to take an opposing view. I'm going to be perfectly honest and confess that until I started the stream of conscious waterfall of "IF"s, I thought I was as well.
Instead of ending this summation with a firm answer as to what Coleman should or shouldn't have done in the past or what he should do in the future, I'm going to just say that I hope this makes us all appreciate the fragile nature of the success/failure tipping points in our sport.
Being opinionated and even critical is fine, but maybe before you go on any editorial assassination attempts of those in our sport for whatever transgressions, you'll keep in mind that all of those things I mentioned create intimidating propositions just when reading them online.....imagine trying to actually live like that with the expectation that you're never going to eff up.