Dara Torres-Amazing

I am curious about how people feel about the Rick DeMont case, which seems to be an example of an athlete with a banned substance in his system that I would not want to condemn in the terms some here have expressed. Personally it seems to me that the system failed him despite any onus on him to control what went into his body. In 2001, the USOC said that Rick was an innocent victim and cleared his name. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/.../ About 7 years ago, I had heard that 1964 Olympian Steve Clark, who is an attorney was looking into appealing the case for Rick and trying to petition to get awarded the gold medal for the 400 Free in the 1972 Olympics. I heard that it was on the IOC docket along with other petitions, like Tim McKee's petition to get awarded the gold medal in the 400 IM in that same Olympics because today he would have tied for it and awarded one like Gary Hall Jr/Anthony Erving in 2000 and Nancy Hogshead/Carrie Steinseifer in 1984. After the 1972 Olympics it was decided that awarding races by one thousand of a second was not accurate and wrong to do so in the first place and in the future there would be ties if the time was identical to the one hundredth of a second. Simple request and the IOC has turned down the appeal for Tim Mckee. The IOC is not known to overturn decisions even if they don't make sense in the first place. Rick's might be a little harder because it was on the banned list even though it was proven he got no competitive advantage and the person that was awarded the gold medal (Brad Cooper) agreed that he should be restored the gold medal. It might take years for a positive decision to be made in Rick DeMont favor. The 1972 Olympics was the first Olympics that drug testing was used so there were no precedents or decisons of the past that the IOC could follow. Because the US Olympic team doctors failed to cross reference the components of a medication (ephedrine) that was on the IOC list of banned substances, Rick failed the drug test and was stripped of the gold medal he won in the 400 Free and DQ'ed in the 1500 Free after qualifing for the final. I am not sure if this was the first case at an Olympics that an appeal was made and if this was the first case that it was beyond the athlete's control in drug testing. Possibly, the IOC set a precedent at that time in that everything is black or white and there is no in between. Now supporters of this will say that this landmark decison would preclude all sorts of appeals in the future with similar circumstances and there should be no excuses regardless of how innocent the victim is. Here is an interesting link I found about his story. www.sfgate.com/.../article.cgi

I am curious about how people feel about the Rick DeMont case, which seems to be an example of an athlete with a banned substance in his system that I would not want to condemn in the terms some here have expressed. Personally it seems to me that the system failed him despite any onus on him to control what went into his body. In 2001, the USOC said that Rick was an innocent victim and cleared his name. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/.../ About 7 years ago, I had heard that 1964 Olympian Steve Clark, who is an attorney was looking into appealing the case for Rick and trying to petition to get awarded the gold medal for the 400 Free in the 1972 Olympics. I heard that it was on the IOC docket along with other petitions, like Tim McKee's petition to get awarded the gold medal in the 400 IM in that same Olympics because today he would have tied for it and awarded one like Gary Hall Jr/Anthony Erving in 2000 and Nancy Hogshead/Carrie Steinseifer in 1984. After the 1972 Olympics it was decided that awarding races by one thousand of a second was not accurate and wrong to do so in the first place and in the future there would be ties if the time was identical to the one hundredth of a second. Simple request and the IOC has turned down the appeal for Tim Mckee. The IOC is not known to overturn decisions even if they don't make sense in the first place. Rick's might be a little harder because it was on the banned list even though it was proven he got no competitive advantage and the person that was awarded the gold medal (Brad Cooper) agreed that he should be restored the gold medal. It might take years for a positive decision to be made in Rick DeMont favor. The 1972 Olympics was the first Olympics that drug testing was used so there were no precedents or decisons of the past that the IOC could follow. Because the US Olympic team doctors failed to cross reference the components of a medication (ephedrine) that was on the IOC list of banned substances, Rick failed the drug test and was stripped of the gold medal he won in the 400 Free and DQ'ed in the 1500 Free after qualifing for the final. I am not sure if this was the first case at an Olympics that an appeal was made and if this was the first case that it was beyond the athlete's control in drug testing. Possibly, the IOC set a precedent at that time in that everything is black or white and there is no in between. Now supporters of this will say that this landmark decison would preclude all sorts of appeals in the future with similar circumstances and there should be no excuses regardless of how innocent the victim is. Here is an interesting link I found about his story. www.sfgate.com/.../article.cgi