Sport, cheating and the problem of forgiveness

I've been bothered for some time about the return of Dwain Chambers to the arena of International Athletics following a two year ban for taking performance enhancing drugs. This wasn't a contested allegation, but a confirmed offence that has many consequences.

1. First it gave him an adavantage over other athletes in what is supposed to be a test of human ability, albeit natural ability trained, honed, tuned like an F1 car.
2. Second, by cheating others, the essential substructure of all fair competition was compromised, robbing others of prizes that they rightfully won, but which were awarded to the person who finished before them by knowingly enhancing his natural capacity.
3. Third, a sporting event that is supposed to celebrate the skill, endurance, strength, speed and instinctive response, and which in the 100 metres event counts speeds in digital fractions of a second, is tarnished to the point where every broken record or championship win is also tarnished till the winner is demonstrated as 'clean'.
4. Fourth, drug testing of athletes uses advanced technology to detect offences, which means the deterrent is the fear and consequence of being found out. But if a drug is developed that is not detectable, how can any performance ever be completely clear of that corrosive skepticism which suspects all incredible performances of being tjust that, not believable.

And so on. Yet Dwain Chambers has taken his punishment, a two year ban. He now wants to make a comeback and prove what he can do as a 'clean' athlete. The controversy is all about whether or not he should ever run again at a professional and international level. He is still excluded from the possibility of going to the Olympics because the British Olypmic Committee still upholds the lifetime ban on athletes convicted of doping. Now that does seem unfair, given that plenty of other athletes with doping offences on their record have served a similar penalty to Chambers, and will be allowed to go. Further, he is off the invitation list for the events that make up every top athletes circuit of competitions. He has stated his remorse and openly acknowledged the wrong of what he did several times in interview, and again last night following his silver medal at the World Championships.

So here's what makes me uneasy. I can argue for both sides in this debate. I do think that something is fundamentally ruined when an athlete cheats; a combination of personal integrity, trusted reputation, an ethic of fairness not far removed from justice, an ethos of assumed mutual admiration amongst peer competitors. To tear that nexus of values apart seems to me to do something to oneself in relation to others, that irrevocably ruins the possibility of recovering previous trust and transparency.

Yet I also think that as Chambers himself pleaded, nobody's whole life should be blighted by one mistake if they take their punishment, admit they were wrong, and undertake to reform. In fact what Chambers was asking for was forgiveness. I am a passionate believer in second chances, in the forgiveness that allows a person to start again, in the gift of a new beginning that gives a person back their self-respect. As a Christian I hear his plea for forgiveness as one I cannot possibly refuse.

But what has my attitude to Dwain Chambers to do with any of this. Who should do the forgiving? The Olympic Committee? The athletes he cheated? His international team members whose own achievements were irrevocably spoiled? And what would forgiveness mean in practice? Does a refusal to allow him to race again mean he isn't forgiven? Must forgiveness mean that a person is treated as if what they had previously done had never happened?

Or is forgiveness more about not allowing our view of Chambers to be defined by his offence, and of valuing the human being he is? Are there offences in certain areas of life, that no matter how much the person who committed them now regrets it, make it impossible to turn the clock back and trust them again in the same situation? What would be a redemptive response to the mess this young man made of his life? But who of all those affected by his actions has the right, the power, to act and respond redemptively?

I confess to being in a dilemma about this - what do others think?

Comments

[Catriona]

It is a very tricky one isn't it? I don't have any good answers, and I am definitely of the school of thought that second chances (and four hundred and ninetieth chances for that matter) ought to be offered where there is genuine remorse and desire to change.

To go off at a slight tangent, it does seem odd that in athletics life means life, whereas, in UK law, life seems to mean ten years with time off for good behaviour...