Richard Gasquet cleared to return

indiana · Tennis legend

Richard Gasquet cleared to return

Ratty · County player

I don't agree. Excessive and disproportionate punishments seem to be the only way to keep a sport clean.

And once a sport gets a certain reputation (ie cycling, athletics, weightlifting) it seems to be very difficult to regain credibility.

indiana · Tennis legend

I absolutely disagree Ratty. "Excessive and disproportionate punishments" bring disrepute on the doping measures themselves.

I hate cheats in sport in any form, but an excessive punishment here, to me would have been laughable and doping is not a laughable business !

I accept there can be real difficulties in properly punishing some of the guilty, but no way should a basically innocent man be made some fall guy, and his career suffer real "excessive and disproportionate" damage. As soon as authorities do that, and fail to properly take account of the individual circumstances, they begin to divorce themselves from humanity.

There is more in the "Montreal" thread and Steven has a link to the full judgemen :

http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=61841&p=3&topicID=29055170

Having read that judgement, I can just about understand the technical reasons for applying some sanction in that he was technically still "in competition" when he went to the nightclub. But anything more, to me, would have been quite unreasonable.

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 16th of July 2009 10:03:19 AM

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 16th of July 2009 10:06:37 AM

steven · Tennis legend

From the Montréal thread:

indiana wrote:
Wow, thanks Steven, that took some reading but I found it very interesting all the same.

I started another thread in which I gave general thoughts just on the BBC report.

I must say I am impressed with the way that the panel have been able to see the wood from the trees ( although it is something we should expect ) and pretty appalled by the ITF's real lack of flexibility.

I remain convinced that any prolonged suspension would indeed as was said be punishing someone for which even the one year punishment was never intended really to punish.

I guess in the end he has been suspended at all for daring to go to a nightclub and kiss a girl " in competition" when the "in competition" aspect was itself in some ways merely technical. Testing for cocaine is apparently not an offense "out of competiion".

So, Richard, next time, just make absolutely absolutely sure you are not in competition then presumably you are allowed to go to a nightclub, and even really take cocaine

I think the ITF feel duty-bound to make the case for the prosecution as strongly as possible, on the assumption that the tribunal will take into account any mitigating factors, so I wouldn't read too much into their apparently inflexible attitude. They have to be seen to be being as tough as possible on drugs and I'm just glad that tribunal was able to see some sense.

The chairman of the tribunal was Tim Kerr http://www.11kbw.com/barristers/detail.php?bid=10 (he's fluent in French, I don't know whether that came in handy!), who also chaired the second Mariano Puerta doping tribunal and the Martina Hingis cocaine tribunal, so isn't exactly known for being lenient - then again, Martina Hingis didn't give them much chance to be lenient by not really fighting the case.

From reading the transcripts over the years, the majority of players who get caught appear to have ingested drugs inadvertently. Of course, I realise they would say that, but in a lot of cases, the tribunals seem to accept this but still punish them for not taking enough care under the strict liability principle.

Obviously players do have a duty to take care, but everyone lets their guard down at times and surely nobody can check everything they eat or drink - who's to say a rabid Rafa fan working in a restaurant isn't going to decide to slip something into Fed's food one day, for example? If I was a tennis player, I'd be paranoid about checking everything I could, but still fearful that I could get caught out by something completely outside my control.

Of course, this doesn't just apply to tennis - as a company director, you can be held legally responsible for lots of things that in practice you can't fully control without being in 10 places at once 24 hours a day, so you can end up taking as much care as possible over everything and still being caught out by something unexpected while others taking a far more cavalier approach to things manage to get away with it. In the same way, I'd guess there are a few tennis players who go to dodgy parties more frequently than Gasquet does yet have never faced a problem like this!

In the end, what worries me is that those taking drugs deliberately may not be getting caught because they know how to cover it up, while those ingesting banned substances inadvertently are getting caught because they don't know there is anything they need to cover up in the first place!