Thursday, September 21, 2000
ONLINE EXTRA
Weightlifter would rather be caught dead than on drugs
SYDNEY -- Online Man is worried for Adrian Mateas, and you should be, too. Mateas, as everyone knows, wants to kill himself. Either that, or go on a hunger strike. Or perhaps sleep in the street. He hasn't decided.
Mateas is a Romanian weightlifter expelled from the Olympics for flunking a pre-Games drug test. Mateas says he's innocent; somebody tampered with his urine sample. The Man hates it when that happens.
Adrian wants the International Olympic Committee to give him another test. “I want to give blood, not just urine,” Mateas said. If that doesn't work, he'll offer up an index finger.
Online Man is shocked -- shocked! -- that any athlete would be expelled from the Olympics for using drugs that make you look like Lou Ferrigno. (Why would anyone want to look like Lou Ferrigno?) Especially weightlifters. The Man thought people with arms the size of phone poles got those arms by working out really, really hard.
Have you seen these weightlifters? They look like they've been inflated, as if someone stuck a bicycle pump in their thighs.
(Have you been watching the weightlifting? Have you been watching anything? NBC's ratings for these Olympics are currently lower than the decibel level at a humming concert. They're the worst since 1968. Network officials are maintaining an outward cool about this. Privately, they've got Jerry Seinfeld on speed-dial.)
The great Turkish lifter Naim Suleymanoglu won gold medals in three successive Olympics before failing this time. Suleymanoglu's arms and legs were so big, his shoulders so broad, he was practically square. Five-by-five. He'd fit perfectly into that big rolling Samsonite you take overseas.
Weightlifting is filthy with steroids, of course. Weightlifting is the Darryl Strawberry of sports. Its problems are so severe, there has been talk of getting it out of the Games, so we can give the Olympics back to the clean sports, like swimming and track.
International lifting officials will tell you the perception of their sport as drug-abused is worse than the reality.
Absolutely. Now, will someone talk Mateas down from that ledge?
Meanwhile, a Bulgarian named Ivan Ivanov was stripped of his silver medal after testing positive for a diuretic. And a woman weightlifter from India became incensed at an Indian paper for claiming she was overweight, drinking beer and eating cheese before the Games. “I don't understand where they get that idea from,” said bronze medalist Karnam Malleswari, while jamming a Ritz cracker into her piehole.
Also, a Korean official refused to hand out medals when a Korean lifter was disqualified for not showing up on time. Maybe he was drinking beer and eating cheese.
Meanwhile, Part 2: A second Romanian, Traian Ciharean, was expelled with Mateas and left the athletes village for parts unknown. Faced with having their whole team shipped home because three of their lifters tested positive in a 12-month span, the Romanians were offered the option of paying a $50,000 fine to the International Weightlifting Federation, which will use it to buy clean hypodermics.
As for Adrian Mateas' threat to do himself in, Sam Coffa, an Aussie who is president of the Olympic weightlifting jury, was not moved. “I'll sharpen the knife,” he said. “The whole world knew we would test before the Games. They're stupid.”
Online Man has seen enough. If he'd wanted to write about drugs, he'd have gone to a Grateful Dead concert.
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