A messy affair for tennis

By Jonathan Overend
BBC tennis reporter

The Rusedski saga has put tennis' drug problem in the spotlight

Greg Rusedski calls it "one of the biggest scandals to surface in sport".

Which scandal is that exactly?

There are so many to choose from.

There is the scandal of seven players testing positive for nandrolone between August 2002 and May 2003, but avoiding suspension.

The scandal of the governing body, the ATP, giving these athletes supplements which were believed to be contaminated, despite repeated warnings.

Consider this - if official trainers were dishing out contaminated supplements, why was nobody sacked?

It is because nobody is certain about the origin of the nandrolone.

The trainer theory was merely the most likely scenario.

How can tennis be comfortable with the possibility of drug cheats competing for prize-money?

But if the ATP cannot confirm whether the trainers are responsible (and many believe they were unfortunate scapegoats) how can they be sure players are not taking the drug deliberately?

Answer - they cannot.

The simple conclusion is that seven players found guilty according to the rulebook were cleared on a legal principle because nobody could be sure how it happened.

Mark Miles, chief executive of the ATP told me in Houston two months ago: "I don't think we'll ever know for sure".

Well, excuse me, but surely everyone deserves to know for sure?

Do so many players, if innocent, deserve such uncertainty hanging over them in Olympic year?

How can tennis be comfortable with the possibility of drug cheats competing for prize money?

This farcical episode stinks all the way from Indianapolis to Sydney.

It stank in the summer, when the BBC first broke the news, and the stench has got worse with the Rusedski revelations.

The only conceivable way he can completely clear his name is using the legal argument "equitable estoppel", which prevents one party from acting against another if the first party was ultimately responsible.

Conspiracy theories abound - is this one big mistake, one big cheat, or one big cover-up?

This law helped clear Bohdan Ulihrach, the Czech player initially banned for two years for testing positive for nandrolone, when his case was re-opened last summer.

It also meant six other players, anonymous to this day, were found not guilty despite the samples of all six recording illegal levels of the steroid.

Rusedski's legal team will have spotted this potential lifeline and will be confident if - and this will be the hard part - they can prove, beyond doubt, the reason for the sample result.

Nobody can win here. If Rusedski legally proves his case, he will still have the ignominy of having failed a drugs test.

The ATP would surely be forced into handing its drug-testing operation over to an independent body, to avoid legal conclusions to every positive test.

If it is a guilty verdict, his career will be over.

And the ATP will be accused of double standards and the players who escaped in the summer will be in danger of being "outed", in a similar way to Greg.

Rusedski's lawyer, Mark Gay, believes the sextet includes some high-profile names and, if he is right, it could be crippling for tennis if its biggest superstars were exposed.

This is why, sadly, the conspiracy theories abound.

One big mistake, one big cheat, or one big cover-up?

Whichever way it goes, it is going to get messy.