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GETTING THE REAL DOPE

Athletes who cheat should pray their test sample doesn’t land under the microscope of Christiane Ayotte, the woman who brought Ben Johnson down.

Text: ROBERT FROSI

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG '04

You walk into the laboratory half-expecting to see a deerstalker hat and pipe somewhere in a corner. After all, the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), on Montreal’s West Island – site of the International Olympic Committee’s doping lab and the new home for Major League Baseball’s testing program – is the domain of one of the sports world’s most renowned anti-doping investigators. For more than 20 years, Dr. Christiane Ayotte has been tracking the dopers and cheaters of world sport like a lab-coated Sherlock Holmes, only instead of a magnifying glass, she’s armed with a microscope. And a lot of power.

In the waiting room outside Ayotte’s office sits a trio of Chinese officials, irked by the recent snaring of their compatriot, a female power lifter, in Ayotte’s net (see page 3). Ayotte’s office is a shambles. Along one wall are filing cabinets containing details of previous cases: Johnson, Sotomayor, Mitchell... The disorganized array of shelves houses an old radio (a gift in honour of her PhD in organic chemistry in 1983); a plaque commemorating her selection by CBC/Radio-Canada as 1999’s Scientist of the Year; and, ironically, a trophy from a bodybuilding association. "I plan to tidy up this mess as soon as I have time," she offers, not all that convincingly.

A passionate teacher, Ayotte imparts concepts of basic chemistry to the lay person in the simple manner the Urban Peasant might expound on the virtues of balsamic vinegar. She comes by her intimate relationship with test tubes honestly: Dad was an eminent biochemist; the family home, a bona fide laboratory. "There were microscopes everywhere. The entire family did experiments all the time. No wonder we all grew up to be scientists."

But don’t think Ayotte grew up dreaming of whistle-blowing. She came to specialize in nabbing the world’s cheaters quite by accident. Originally hired by the INRS to do research into environmental pollutants, she was eventually asked to develop tests with potential applications for sporting competitions. "To me it was solving the same kind of puzzle," she says. The starter’s pistol, as it were, sounded for Ayotte at the 1983 Pan Am Games in Caracas, when several "juiced" Canadian athletes were sniffed out by newly instituted mandatory testing. (The U.S. team, tipped off about the impending tests, boycotted the competition.)

"In the wake of that scandal," says Ayotte, "the Canadian government asked me to develop screening tests for the Los Angeles Olympics. I still remember the first positives that validated the reliability of my tests: two weightlifters named [Terry] Hadlow and [Luc] Chagnon."

The thrill of scientific victory soon gave way to the agony of soul-searching: "At first, I was elated: My test had moved beyond the experimental stage. Then I had a horrible thought: ‘These athletes are so young, and their careers have ended overnight.’" She pauses. "Not that I had any regrets or doubts about what I was doing. It was more that I hadn’t really explored the whole issue. The easy answer was ‘They cheated, and they got what they deserved.’ My interest was more in what pushes athletes into cheating in the first place."

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG '04