By Jason Marsteller
PHOENIX, Arizona, July 25. BASED on the evidence that continues to come to the forefront of the timing of the Jessica Hardy positive drug test, and the decisions made by USA Swimming – the organization may have truly faced a rock-and-a-hard-place type of decision earlier this week.
Let's set the scene.
According to several sources, USA Swimming knew about Hardy's positive drug test on Monday, July 21 – in California. This information came at about the worst time possible for the national governing body, as USA Swimming's own entry deadline for a final team roster came that day, when reading the selection procedures posted by USA Swimming here.
On page 11, in the explanation of the procedure that is likely to leave Kara Lynn Joyce and Rebecca Soni competing in the 50 free and 100 breast, respectively, at the 2008 Beijing Games, the following sentence provides the deadline date for the team:
If, for any reason, an additional Team position or an additional event position shall become vacant after July 21, 2008, (entry deadline), no additional members shall be added to the Team.
However, the drop-dead deadline from FINA to receive entry forms from National Olympic Committees, available on its website here, was July 23 – in Switzerland.
Now, at first blush, someone might say that USA Swimming had plenty of time to pull the trigger and replace Hardy with Tara Kirk in the 100 breast, Lara Jackson in the 50 free, and Amanda Weir in the 400 freestyle relay. Knowing something on July 21, regardless of a self-imposed deadline, should allow someone to make a last-ditch effort before the true final deadline of July 23 in the final stages of the process, wouldn't you think?
There are so many levels involved in this conversation, that I don't believe it can be simplified that much. While in the end, I believe that USA Swimming may have done itself a disservice with the timing of Trials, leading to this inevitable difficulty if a positive test did occur, the U.S. had not had someone test positive in this time frame for two decades. It would take someone with an extremely long memory in the sport to also be in the planning stages to bring up that red flag during scheduling talks.
Let's look two scenarios that could have taken, or still could take place, for conversation purposes along with the dangerous territory USA Swimming would leave themselves in. Each scenario leads to a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't understanding of the decision-making process.
Hardy is expelled from the team on July 22 in time to add Kirk, Jackson and Weir before the deadline on July 23
While much commentary is leaning towards this being an optimal outcome, this situation probably opens up USA Swimming to the most liability in court. What happens if Hardy's appeal works and she is no longer able to be on the team because she was never listed on the final roster? That's a huge lawsuit waiting to happen.
Let's say for conversation sake, Hardy's appeal doesn't work – but a Kicker Vencill situation happens later down the road where it comes to light that Hardy tested positive due to some bad supplement batch. USA Swimming then has to contend with not sticking behind a swimmer to help them through a particularly difficult situation where the person is not completely at fault.
Hardy is not expelled from the team in time, leaving Kirk, Jackson and Weir on the sidelines.
This case, which is the likely outcome with the available information we have at this point in time, leaves USA Swimming open to a lawsuit from Kirk, Jackson and Weir because of an assumption that USA Swimming had time between July 21 and July 23 to make a move.
In this scenario, it would have been extremely helpful for the entire process to be taking place a week or two before deadline – not two days. The timing of Trials really hurt USA Swimming here.
All of this conversation doesn't even take into consideration the time difference between Palo Alto, Calif., and Lausanne, Switzerland, that makes a report of a positive test on July 21 in the States be even that much closer to the final FINA deadline of July 23. Also, the internal deadline of July 21 most likely was in place to make sure that all the Is were dotted and Ts were crossed after USA Swimming submitted a final roster to the USOC so that the USOC could then turn it over to FINA after doing its own processing.
This is definitely why the leadership at USA Swimming is paid the big bucks, if you will. While hindsight being 20/20 proves that Trials should always be held enough in advance of final deadlines to give a buffer zone for worst case scenarios, it is fairly difficult to believe that anyone within USA Swimming felt the need to plan for a potential positive test. Hopefully a lesson has been learned and plenty of time will be allotted after Trials to counter these issues in 2012.
For now, we sit and wait to see how these issues play out as Hardy's appeal process continues. We'll also wait to see whether Kirk's appeal will have time to work, if Hardy's is not granted.