Artifact: Doping Control

Hey, guess what I was doing 22 years ago this month? I was watching medal-winning, Olympic-class athletes pee into jars.

Uh-huh!

The catchphrase was “nipples to knees”, meaning that the athlete had to pull his shirt up above his nipples and his sweatpants needed to be below his knees. And, facing me, he peed into a jar.

I was supposed to watch medal-winning actual Olympic athletes pee into jars for the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, but a nasty, contentious divorce and the physical move from Calgary to Toronto during the Olympics kinda made that improbable. Still, I was able to watch Olympic-class athletes pee into jars during World Cup events the year prior.

This was not as enjoyable as even the most die-hard watersports enthusiast might think. For the most part, winter sports athletes at the events for which I was a doping control official are built in a fashion to maximize their ability to propel machinery down an icy channel. So, to be charitable, they were pretty doughy. And young.

And if you think it’s fun watching a hugely-embarrassed kid scarfing can after can of ginger ale to squeeze a few drops of pee out of his bladder — or, if it was his last event in the competition, beer! — you’re dreaming. Fun it’s not. Sometimes it took a while, since they’d fine-tuned their fluid intake to maximize performance and weigh-in numbers. Sometimes they’d do sit-ups, naked. Ahem. Perhaps I would feel differently today.

Nah.

Although I will say this: the US bobsleigh team affected my dreams for months afterward. I think they actually had a stylist traveling in their entourage. Very Top Gunny.

I needed RCMP clearance, too, which got me access to absolutely every place at the facility, even around diplomats and VIPs. I can’t believe such a huge stoner at the time — cripes, just look at the photos! — not just passed all of the prerequisite security screening required for the certification, by the most stringent standards, but that I was also charged with ensuring athletes weren’t… doping.

Funny.

(This post was brought to you through the magic of Pernod on the rocks and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”.)