Spain yesterday was hit by another scandal when Marta Dominguez the country's most famous athlete and world 3000m steeplechase champion was arrested. She is being investigated for supplying performance-enhancing drugs to other athletes - though not taking them herself. Others, well known trainers and medical people in the world of athletics, have also been arrested. Her arrest follows on from other investigations into the world of sport for doping this year and going back to 2006. In the cycling world, Spanish Olympic rider, Alejandro Valverde, was banned and another, Alberto Contador, is under provisional suspension.
Another separate but related piece of news is that several middle-management police officers have also been arrested in Cataluña for alleged connection to the importation of cocaine through Barcelona's port. They belong to the home-grown Catalan Police Force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, but other police forces are implicated, including the Guardia Civil and the National Police. They have been on the take, it seems, receiving 'gifts' of various types and value for 'favours' given. Apparently there are also connections to the Italian Mafia and Columbian drug cartels with certain criminal investigations concerning drugs and prostitution having been 'discouraged' or 'blocked' by senior policemen.
The first item is kind of sad in that athletes and sportmen need to resort to underhand tactics to achieve fame and success - especially as younger sportsmen look up to people like Dominguez. But now what's the point of training to get to the top, what's the point of this respect when she - and others like her are maybe cheating their way to the top? Where will it stop. Will the world of football be next? Imagine if folk heroes Messi and Ronaldo were caught up in this type of sordid cheating by taking drugs to enhance their stamina! Luckily the world's major sport seems to monitor drug-taking better than most - match-fixing seems to be a greater danger. However, implications have been made by a Spanish sports doctor in the French magazine L'equipe, Eufemiano Fuentes, that both Barca and the Spanish world champions are 'not so clean' - immediately denied by Del Bosque and Iniesta.
The second item has much wider implications than the first in that it affects all sections of society. It suggests that Spanish police are in danger of becoming like Mexican and South American police, making as much as they can out criminals while they can and letting criminals make the rules. It means very dog has its price and drug dealers seem to know who to get to in order that blind eyes are turned at the right moment and in the right place. It could mean that law and order as we know it could be in danger of disintegrating with corruption across the board. You'd expect such a situation in a Third World country where police salaries are pitifully low, but this is Europe for God's sake, so it's greed not need as the motive.
I'm not sure what the answer is. In some countries non-corrupt police when they exist have a short career or even life span and family members even shorter when threats not gifts are used by criminals, And who do you complain to when the barrel is full of rotten apples? Who do you shop a corrupt colleague to? Who can you trust? This dilemma is the theme of countless films across the globe. In many cases the answer seems to be: no one.
The first case ('Operation Galgo' or 'Greyhound') seems to be escalating - you only need to turn over more stones. Yes, it is bad but it's about sport and that's it. Society won't collapse and just a few personalities will lose respect. After all many of the tattooed iron pumpers I see everyday in my gym are on pills and powders of various kinds. To date only 14 people have been called in for questioning only two of them top athletes: Alemayehu Bezabeh, European cross-country champion and Nuria Fernandez, European 1,500m gold medalist. However if it does spread further maybe the jargon word 'contagion', used lately to describe a financial 'disease' countries can catch, might then be applicable here. How many more athletes will be 'touched'? We can only wait and see. Meanwhile in the early stages an atmosphere of political correctness reigns - the Spanish athletics captain, Manolo Martinez, has stressed that if people are guilty they should be punished and if not they should be exhonorated. Well chosen words - meaning nothing.
At least the doping affair is manageable and out in the open - all you need do is have more random tests at high levels. Police and political corruption are not so manageable, not so easy to root out and cause much more damage.
