The U.S. Olympic trials begin tomorrow in Eugene, Oregon, and Charlottesville shot-putter (and recent C-VILLE 20 cover boy) Adam Nelson will have to place in the top two to get a chance to compete in his third Olympic games. Yesterday, NPR published its fourth piece on Nelson, a two-time silver medalist, in its “Bound for Beijing” series on Olympic athletes, this time focusing on doping.
During this year’s Beijing Olympics, NBC will surely serve up a syrupy platter of heartwarming stories of athletes’ overcoming struggles to compete. But the games will also be pegged to plenty of stories on doping, casting a cloud of doubt over many feats of strength and endurance.
“Probably the most frustrating part about what I do is there’s nothing I can do, nothing that I can tell you, no test that I can take that can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m 100 percent clean,” Nelson told NPR’s Tom Goldman. Nelson has never failed any of his 120 drug tests.
Nelson has a website, throwclean.com, that makes his anti-doping stance crystal clear. He says he made a promise 20 years ago to his dad that he would never dope and says he has stuck by that promise. And though he doesn’t believe in coddling dopers (“They are committing fraud and should serve jail time,” he said to NPR), he also seems to understand that the issue is complicated.
“I think it’s natural to have those kinds of questions,” he said. “What would give me an edge? Well, probably steroids. Probably growth hormone.”
