I said you wanna be startin' somethin', You got to be startin' somethin'

On Friday, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) made official what the media has reported on for a few weeks: that USA swimmer Jessica Hardy had a positive drug test at the 2008 Olympic Trials. USADA also confirmed that she had withdrawn from the team. This confirmation came about following Hardy's appearance before the North American branch of the Court for Arbitration of Sport (CAS) on Thursday (you can read the report from that hearing here).

The reporting on this story, and the related matter of the vacationing third-place finisher in one of Ms. Hardy's event wanting to be put on the Olympic team in her place, have irked me. I've been mostly irked by the holes presented in the story:

• a supposed entry deadline gap between Ms. Hardy's notification on July 21 and the final Olympic entry deadline on July 23. Failing to mention: the date the USA swimming team roster was set (July 7), and the date the roster/entries were finalized (July 21--USA Swimming submitted the entries to the USOC to send to FINA to send to Beijing by July 23);
• that the selection procedure was published in February 2008, and (most likely) all Trials participants had a copy of it, which they may or may not have read (and I say "most likely" because I don't know and have not seen it addressed in the media);
• that official notification of the test and disqualification of Ms. Hardy as an Olympian had yet to happen (she actually left the Olympic team before she was kicked off it); and
• how can an alternate be named to a team, when there's not an officially open space for her?

(By the way, this doesn't even address the third-place finisher being on vacation, which most likely means she wasn't training/preparing to be at the Games....)

But Friday's announcement should help with my angst. Tomorrow's continuation of Ms. Hardy's hearing, to determine the fairness of her automatically garnered 2-year ban, should also be interesting and hopefully helpful. Who knows, maybe the way the story has been framed by the media will help her: it has seemed unfair coverage, in my mind, to her detriment. And I should point out: I do believe that if she really, purposely, took a banned substance, that she should not go to Olympics and should be banned. However, I also think she should be treated fairly until that is officially determined, which I don't believe happened. I also don't think USA Swimming has been treated very fairly, either.


Update 8/7/08:
USA Swimming's Executive Director released this statement regarding the situation (in some respects, they couldn't comment until now because of their situation; which made them appear bad in some eyes... as if they were trying to protect themselves or cover things up). The part that sticks in my brain from this: "...even when Jessica did test positive and was formally charged by USADA with a doping offense, she had the right to defend herself against this charge; remember, ours is a system in which you are innocent until proven guilty."


It's too high to get over (yeah, yeah)
Too low to get under (yeah, yeah)
You're stuck in the middle (yeah, yeah)
And the pain is thunder (yeah, yeah)