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By John Leicester | AP
March 20th at 3:27 am
PARIS – When the highest ranked bridge player was tested positive for a steroid that Lance Armstrong had also used to cheat in the Tour de France, it was easy to sneer. Juice in cards? Ha! But in the game of cards recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee, fans and players were amazed.
While Armstrong's possible dismantling as a rookie cyclist was widely hailed as a stellar victory in the fight against doping through sport, bridge critics felt that Geir Helgemo's positive anti-doping test was a black mark for the anti-doping system and evidence that it does not be applied consistently in all sports.
"People think it's wrong," said Boye Brogeland, a bridge professional who won two world championships with Helgemo, about the test of the top-ranked player for steroid testosterone and clomiphene, a drug against infertility.
"Nobody thinks he's taking this to get a bridge advantage," Brogeland said in a phone interview.
Even the world's leading bridge federation that punished Helgemo, 49, last month by banning Norwegians from taking part in lucrative professional competitions, says that most of the drugs and doping methods forbidden in the bridge because the game was signed by World Anti-World The rules of the anti-doping agencies, in fact, do not make the bridge players better.
Testosterone and clomiphene, both of which are included in the Helgemo sample provided on September 29 at a World Bridge Series tournament in Orlando, Florida, are among the substance groups that WBF, in its Anti-Doping Manual, does not have. should not affect. bridge performance.
However, the WBF forbids and sporadically tests them, not because they are suspected of being used in the game, but because it is the price the federation has to pay to join the organization. Olympic. Acceptance of the WADA Code and the jurisdiction of the highest sports court, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, are necessary conditions for recognition by the IOC. The recognition of the IOC, in turn, helps secure the status and funding of Bridge, which is struggling to remain relevant to the video game era. It also allows the WBF leaders to hang on to the unfruitful ambition of one day playing bridge at the Olympic Games.
On the bridge forums, the Helgemo case provoked lively debate and feedback, critics questioning Bridge's respect for WADA rules and Olympic affiliation. For them, last year's CAS decision, which undermined the game's efforts to eliminate cheating cards, was further proof that being part of the IOC system is doing more harm than bridge. The Swiss court overturned the five-year bans imposed by the bridge authorities for deceiving the best players, Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes. The CAS did not completely absolve the pair, but ruled that the European Bridge League did not prove that players used a predefined code during games to secretly reveal themselves with their hands.
"The integrity of the game is lost because we are trying to compete in the Olympics," Brogeland said. "The price is too high. Because of the Olympics, you can not eliminate the real tricks of the game and now you eliminate players who are not tricks. "
The Helgemo case also has a negative impact on the global anti-doping system as it has highlighted the inequality of WADA's rules in sports.
Unlike the vast majority of sports, which test athletes both in competition and elsewhere, the Bridge Federation only tests players in major competitions.
And the competitive tests of the WBF are extremely limited: only 11 tests in total in 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available, and 14 in 2016.
"We just do not have people to manage," said Jaap Stomphorst, who heads a WBF anti-doping subcommittee. "In major competitions, we test about 10-12 players, that's all."
The fact that Helgemo escaped with a one-year ban has also shown how unequally anti-doping sanctions are applied in all sports. He seems to have been treated with indulgence compared to active sports athletes. The US anti-doping agency, for example, last year, imposed a three-year ban on amateur cyclist Dylan Lima only for testosterone and a one-year ban on clomiphene only for two MMA fighters. For performance enhancers such as testosterone, the AMA code calls for a four-year ban when athletes do not prove that they have not intentionally injected themselves.
David Harris, the WBF lawyer who sued Helgemo before a disciplinary committee of the federation, said that the player "was not able to give a definitive explanation" about how testosterone and clomiphene have entered his body. Helgemo first suggested that he may have taken pills for his girlfriend before later blaming the dietary supplements that had been given to him by a friend, Harris said in a phone interview.
"The panel probably made a clemency mistake," he said. "They took into account all the circumstances related to the situation and decided that a period of one year was the appropriate suspension period."
Helgemo has not responded to the efforts of the Associated Press to reach it by email and SMS. Harris said the Norwegian is currently serving a six-month sentence for tax offenses unrelated to his doping ban.
He said that as a top professional, Helgemo had already been tested, that he should have known the anti-doping rules and be more cautious.
"It was an unfortunate case, but it was a case of inattention in many ways," Harris said. "It's a person who makes a lot of money playing bridge."
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