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Allyson Felix (Kirby Lee photo)

Allyson Felix and lack of drug-testing at her meet in Mexico City where she recorded a new World Junior Record of 22.11 - Doug Speck

A tragic sidelight to our sport over recent decades has been the abuse by some of drugs in enhancing their performances, especially at the Olympic level, with the result of seriously harming out sport of track and field in the publics' eye. Episodes such as Seoul Olympic 100 Meter Champion Ben Johnson being disqualified because of his use of performance enhancing drugs have made it the requirement that athletes who achieve World Record status have immediate drug testing done to make sure there is none in their system at the time of the record. This is certainly not meant to infer that the huge majority of Olympic level athletes are involved with drug usage, but is done as a way to insure the integrity of record keeping in our sport and in the publics' eyes. Information that has come out of systems such as East Germany, where a number of senior and "junior-age" (under 20) record performances a few decades past, showed that vast use of drug usage was a fact of life, with hilarious commentary exposed of top stars sending letters to the East German federation complaining that some were being favored in the amount of illegal drugs that were being passed out to some stars as opposed to others. When the Berlin Wall fell records of the East German sports machine fell into the hands of some people who saved them, with some rather scary information eventually coming out on the long-term health effects of these performance enhancing pharmaceuticals.

How does this involved Allyson Felix? Well, if you remember on May 3rd, she traveled to a meet in Mexico City, and broke the World Junior 200 Meter Record with a 22.11 run that took down the old "Under-age 20" World Best of 22.19 from 1980 set by Russian Natalya Bochina. Unfortunately, no drug testing was apparently conducted, which is a must for ratifying these global records. Certainly, with the high quality of world senior records and time of the season for most record-setting, which takes place later in the summer in Europe, everyone was surprised with Allyson's 22.11 run there. Below is a translation (via an internet translation service - don't ask me where the term "motorboat" came through in the translation, but the important record information is in the last paragraph) of a French story on the situation (just before Allyson ran in Paris a week ago):

"Golden delicious League - Paris/Saint-Denis: Alysson Felix takes its first steps

PARIS, 3 juil (AFP) - American Allyson Felix, the new feeling of the sprint, carries out at 17 years its first appearance in France with the 200 m of the meeting of athletics of Paris/Saint-Denis, Friday.

Even if it already came to Europe, it chose to come to run to Paris to discover the Stage of France, where it could be the high-speed motorboat of the 200 m.

"I chose this meeting because it offers a good advisability to me of discovering the stage of the Championships of the world. I believe that it will be a large advantage next August ", explained in - already - large professional of the communication, Felix, recent third of the national Championships which were used as selection for the World ones.

In May in Mexico City, it had even beaten the record of the world juniors of the 200 m, but its time of 22.11 does not have any chance to be approved fault of absence of control antidopage. Information which it learned besides Thursday in Roissy, with the hotel of the athletes."

(ed note - we would understand the above paragraph to indicate that there was no doping control at the Mexico City competition, thereby eliminating the 22.11 mark (achieved with legal wind of -0.5 mps) from World Junior Record consideration.)

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Allyson Felix has a birthdate of Nov 18, 1985, which means she has the entire Olympic 2004 year to chop down the 22.19 effort as an international "junior" (under 20 and someone who does not turn that age during the year of competition). It would be a real sin if she had a 1984 birthdate, which would make this 2003 year the final for her "under-20 World Junior" level competition. She still has a summer of competition to go after the 22.19 this year, but with the rounds required at the World Championships in Paris later this summer and all, it will be a challenging one to knock down.

We have had first hand experience personally with the necessities of the drug-testing situations. In the 1984 Olympics, as a "competition faciltiies coordinator" (in charge of field event equipment at 1984 games, but really glorified trash picker-upper and "blown away umbrella mover") we always found it interesting that folks left the finish line and field event areas to go to a little trailer outside the LA Coliseum to go wee-wee in a bottle to be tested before they would secure their Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals on the victory stand. Marion Jones had an unfortunate experience with the drug testing situation her senior year of high school, where a letter to inform her of the need to report for testing (it is done year-round with Olympic level competitors, as she was as a prep) was lost for a few days in the mail room at Coach Elliott Mason's LA Harbor College. That mistake cost Marion the chance to represent her country internationally for a season, and I remember bizarre situations with Mt. SAC Relays Meet Staff on the phone with USATF officials discussing Marion's "tainting" of the Open field at Mt. SAC if she were allowed to run in the prep division of that meet. Marion was allowed to compete at the prep level, but we think it left a kind of bad taste in her mouth about our sport for a time, and if you do remember, she had a second sport, and seemed to concentrate on it for a time after the incident, leading her University of North Carolina basketball team to an NCAA championship as a frosh athlete the winter and spring after that situation happening.

None of the above is meant to infer that Allyson or Marion have ever been involved in any drug-taking situation, as we are sure they have not been. It is just some background to the record situation on Allyson's 22.11, which will not show up on International record listings from the world-wide governing body, the IAAF.

The 22.11 will certainly still be considered the Prep All-Time best by Jack Shepard and Track and Field News, with its "non-high school" event status as an international "out of country" meet making it not eligible for consideration as a National Federation record, which must be achieved in a US High-School only sanctioned affair.

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