Nick Butler: To what extent should we forgive doping cheats?

It was with a certain sense of disappointment last week we noticed the name of cyclist Alexander Vinokourov listed on the official website as an ambassador for Almaty's bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympics.

In normal circumstances, as one of the best known and most successful athletes Kazakhstan has ever produced, he would have been an obvious choice.

Yet, he also happens to be among the most notorious doping cheats in an era of cycling riddled with drugs cheats, testing positive for blood doping during the 2007 Tour de France. Although he returned from a two-year ban to win the London 2012 road race title, severe question marks have been raised over his current tenure as general manager of the Astana team which registered five positive test results in 2014.

When we raised the question with Almaty officials of whether Vinokourov's involvement could have a negative impact on their bid, at first there seemed surprise and confusion as to why it was an issue. "He won an Olympic gold medal without failing a drug test and is a huge hero in Kazakhstan," I was told. "We believe in second chances."

But, in our opinion, that was not the point. Whatever he has done since returning to the sport, the fact of the matter is he was caught doping, served a ban and is thus a cheat whose reputation will always be tarnished as a result of it. And despite what they said at first, Almaty eventually seemed to endorse this view, by quietly removing his name from the list of ambassadors before confirming his resignation when questioned.

But the whole situation got me thinking about whether our view, of criticising any doping cheat even if they have returned from a ban and have - seemingly - never been implicated again, is fair.

Alexander Vinokourov has now resigned from his role as an Almaty 2022 ambassador ©AFP/Getty Images

A hawkish anti-doping policy is common in all major news organisations, where time and time again readers are reminded of the fact that athlete x failed a drug test 10 years ago whenever they are written about. Yet is this not unfair and, as Kazakh officials initially claimed, do these athletes not deserve a second chance, to not just be allowed to compete again, but to do so without scepticism or derogatory comments?

In Britain, there has been a furore in recent months over whether Ched Evans, a former Sheffield United footballer who served two-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted of rape, should be allowed to return having done his time. Various clubs have shown willingness to sign him but all have eventually backed down in the face of a virulent opposition movement.

But this is about rape, a criminal act of an appalling nature, whereas doping, for all its awfulness, is incomparable.

Occasionally, not often but sometimes, sportspeople are wrongly implicated. We have seemingly seen that this year with Welsh athletes Rhys Williams and Gareth Warburton, who each took an energy drink which had anabolic steroids in even though the substance was not meant to contain it, as well as with German speed skater Claudia Pechstein, who has claimed her failure via a biological passport reading was based on a rare medical condition rather than illegal drug use.

Despite the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling against her, her case will now be heard by the German Civil Court in what could set a historic precedent.

Speed skater Claudia Pechstein is one athlete who claims to have been falsely convicted of doping, and perhaps has justification behind her claim ©Getty Images

Doping, when an athlete is guilty, is also an awful lot more complicated than a simple case of a "bad" individual cheating.

As we have said before, if all of your team-mates and rivals are doing something that makes them automatically that crucial 20 per cent better, and what's more, they are getting away with it, would you not be sorely tempted to join them, particularly if your whole livelihood depends on success? It certainly bears thinking about.

A journalistic comparison is phone hacking. Whatever moral higher ground I want to take, if I was being beaten to every story by someone I knew was phone-hacking, I cannot put my hand on my heart and say I would not join them.

As we have seen in the past with state sponsored doping in regimes like East Germany - and as we are beginning to learn with relation to the Russian athletics team today - athletes can be under huge pressure to dope: from coaches, administrators, doctors and other authority figures.

When Russian distance-runner Olga Yegorova won gold at the 2001 World Athletics Championships in Edmonton shortly after escaping a ban for taking erythropoietin (EPO) on a technicality, athletes, including Britain's Paula Radcliffe, held a ban calling for "EPO Cheats Out". We had little sympathy for Yegorova's position, particularly when she was handed a seven-year ban in 2003.

Yet, when you think that Yegorova probably had little choice and was a mere component of a system which would have spat her out if she had not complied, one feels more sympathy. For the athlete who tested positive is also a victim of sorts, as well as those who were cheated out of medals as a result of the doping. A similar view could probably taken of a good chunk of all failed doping cases, including many cyclists.

But, at the same time, it is hard to forgive when you think of what impact these figures have had on those who, as far as we know, are clean, but have been denied time and time again by those who are not.

And from our perspective as the spectator, it is also a case of having your trust betrayed.

It is hard to feel sympathy for some of the most high profile doping cheats, such as Lance Armstrong ©Getty Images

For millions of cycling fans, Lance Armstrong was a hero and a role-model, someone who had recovered from a life-threatening illness to win arguably the hardest sporting event on earth. It then turned out that not only was he doping, but he was doing so to a greater extent that virtually anyone else ever had.

Less a product of the system, Armstrong was more a leader of it, finding new ways to dope on a greater scale and bullying and ridiculing anyone who got in his way, be they team-mates, rivals, doctors or journalists.

I disagree with people who says Armstrong is being unfairly made a scapegoat for all the problems in cycling, but neither do I think that other high profile cycling drug cheats should be thought of more favourably.

This brings us back to Vinokourov. The Kazakh rider recovered from a lacklustre start with two scarcely believable time trial and mountain top stage victories in the 2007 Tour.

Soon after it emerged that they weren't believable at all, but the result of blood doping.

It is the sheer arrogance that someone thought they could get away which is more infuriating about a case like this, particularly when you remember United States' initial winner Floyd Landis did a similar thing during the 2006 Tour. Whatever Vinokourov has done since, and even if his London 2012 victory was done clean, his reputation will be always sullied.

Even if he is entitled to return to the sport and compete, and is not automatically a "bad" person who should be hated in any general sense, surely he is not a reputable person to support a country's Olympic bid.

That is even more so the case when you consider how important an issue doping was in the race for the 2020 Games, where Japan's virtually flawless record in comparison to Turkey and Spain's less successful one was considered a key factor in Tokyo's victory over Istanbul and Madrid.

Whatever the complexity of sporting drug use, surely we should not forget and ignore the fact that someone is a doper - or "former" doper - when we write about them. If not for any other reason, then simply in order to go some way towards warding off other athletes who are tempted to follow their path?

Nick Butler is a senior reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.