By James Christie
Globe and mail
Tuesday, December 4, 2001

Canadians level cross-country field

If Canadians stand any chance of getting to the Olympic medal podium in cross-country skiing at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, it will be thanks to the work of two members of the national women's team. They have worked to level the field.

Beckie Scott of Vermillion, Alta., and Sara Renner of Canmore, Alta., joined up with U.S. skier Justin Wadsworth after the world championship doping scandal last spring to get the names of World Cup participants on a petition and pressure international cross-country officials to stop ignoring rampant cheating with blood boosters.

Skiers were losing faith in the Federation Internationale de Ski to weed out chemical cheats who were boosting the oxygen-carrying capacity of their blood. The FIS needed superstars to help sell the sport and get sponsorships, and was reluctant to crack down on its heroes until the Finnish team was disgraced by a series of positive tests done by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The WADA nailed, among others, Mika Myllyla, a three-time Olympic medalist and four-time world champion.

"We were just so tired of the happenings going on around us that we decided we had to try and do something," Scott said in an e-mail. "Anyway, we began circulating it amongst the athletes and coaches of the World Cup and came up with 115 signatures [pretty much everyone signed it except for a few teams] and then submitted it to the FIS in time for their annual spring meetings this past May."

The rank-and-file demand for testing paid off. The WADA has taken over drug testing for FIS and the officials say it's their goal to test virtually every Olympian before the Feb. 8 opening ceremony.

Renner said she was delighted when she passed around the petition that the Italian team, long a target of doping rumours, signed on. The dominant Russian team did not.

The North Americans still have a long way to go to become world beaters, but the Canadian women have made inroads. Scott, after posting a breakthrough third place in a World Cup race last year, has been making use of an oxygen tent to stimulate the production of red blood cells without chemicals, as she prepares for the thin air at the mile-high Games. She has been dominant on the North American Continental Cup circuit and had a third- and fourth-place World Cup finish on the Olympic venue at Soldier Hollow.

"I still believe that there are clean athletes who are successful and can reach the top, regardless of the doping that goes on. I have to," Scott said. Full women's team, men still hoping Canada will send a fully qualified women's cross-country team of Scott, Renner, Milaine Theriault of St. Quentin, N.B., and Edmonton sisters Amanda and Jaime Fortier. Only one male skier has qualified for the team, Montreal-born Donald Farley of Calgary.

A group of would-be Olympians are imploring Cross-Country Canada to let them enter a World Cup relay race in Davos, Switzerland on Dec. 16 in a last-ditch bid to qualify. The group's manager said each will spend $3,000 of his own money to travel to Switzerland in the hope the federation will authorize their entry.

"All we want is the chance," Dominique Gagnon said.

But Leopold Nadeau, president of Cross-Country Canada said, "even though there's no FIS criteria for entry in this World Cup race, only Donald Farley among this group has made our internal criteria for the team -- criteria every other skier in the country has been trying to make. We'd be breaking our own ethics to enter them."

Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport
N202 - 801 King Edward Avenue
Ottawa, ON, Canada
K1N 6N5
Phone: 613-562-5667
Fax: 613-562-5668
Email: caaws@caaws.ca