The big news in the nordic skiing world is that the International Olympic Committee has handed down the harshest anti-doping penalties ever (well, except the punishments suffered by athletes who have died from doping). On Wednesday, the IOC hit six Austrian racers (two biathletes and four cross-country skiers) with permanent lifetime bans from all Olympic competition and erased their 2006 Olympic records. In February 2006, at the height of the Torino Olympic games, the six had been caught in their team house with a near-industrial quantity of the equipment needed to dope blood with chemicals or blood products.
On its face, these sanctions aren't obviously worse than, say, stripping Johann Muhlegg of the three gold medals he won in cross-country races at the Salt Lake City games, at which he was found to have doped heavily. However, in this case none of the Austrian athletes were found to have actually doped - only to have "a stunning array of doping products [including] syringes, needles, blood bags, butterfly valves for intravenous use, bottles of saline and devices for measuring hemoglobin levels and determining blood groups, as well as the banned substances hCG and albumin."
Of the six banned athletes, only one did especially well at Torino (placing fourth in a biathlon race), though all have turned in good results in other venues. One, Johannes Eder, nearly won a bronze in a distance race at the recent Nordic Ski World Championships in Sapporo, Japan. However, penalties may still be forthcoming for Austria's best racer, Christian Hoffman, a freestyle-technique specialist who races sparingly but always - suspiciously - seems to be in the best possible form for World Championships and Olympic Games. At Torino, Hoffman suddenly left the team house just before the fateful police raid. Hoffman's case was referred to the International Ski Federation to "consider whether Mr Hoffman’s absence from the Torino Olympic Games constituted a violation of his obligation to provide accurate whereabouts information." This is not good for Hoffman. Put your euros on his abruptly retiring.
Beyond the decimating effect on the Austrian ski team, the IOC sanctions open the door to heavy punishment of even those who seem to be doping. In this case, given the "stunning array" of stuff the athletes possessed, it seems likely there were at least preparing to dope, if they had not already done so in some way that eluded testing. But at the same time, the sanctions - coming from the major international sporting organization and taking an especially draconian form - may permanently erase the "innocent until proven guilty" principle which is assumed to exist, if not actually operate, in the shadowy zone of doping violations. Though few would impugn an organization with the prestige and power of the IOC, its actions now may permit other organizations - say, the International Cycling Union, currently pursuing Floyd Landis for doping at the 2006 Tour de France - to harshly and permanently punish athletes for appearing to dope. The Austrians appeared pretty bad, what with the bloody bandages and used syringes. What's next, though? Bans for having too strong a kick at the end of a race where everyone else has been suffering? Bans for winning a grueling stage race that destroyed the world's elite? Bans for setting personal bests?