USA Track and Field CEO Doug Logan offered a frank assessment yesterday of the impact of performance-enhancers on his sport. Speaking at the Focus on the Future conference in Scottsdale, AZ, Logan warned that steroids and other illegal substances were threatening to “choke the life” out of track and field. But then he added that the “supplement industry was braiding the noose.”

Reading his speech, I couldn’t help but notice some similarities between track and field and the supplement industry. Logan noted that USATF has been forced to move closer to a zero-tolerance policy because when one athlete breaks the rules, it taints all athletes. Even if 99% of athletes were clean, it wouldn’t matter, he said. “Without drugs, our sport is all but invisible to the press. They have no interest without scandal.”

While Logan repeated a few of the usual broadsides about the industry lobbying against “any federal regulation whatsoever,” (AERs, anyone?) he did make some good points. “By looking the other way” when athletes broke the rules, he said, the sport “created a permissive culture that provided a catalyst for more cheating.” He added that he is personally committed to doing his part to “reverse this cultural perversion.” As an example, he cited a letter he wrote to President Bush asking him not to show leniency to former Olympian Marion Jones.

The industry would do well to consider adopting a similar attitude toward companies that knowingly skirt the rules. Many of the marketers that sell adulterated or illegal products that masquerade as legal supplements are small operations that require contract manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, fulfillment centers, and other sources of assistance. Isn’t it time these helpful companies stopped looking the other way as well?— DS