Vijender should be careful, boxing and drugs go back a long way

Innocent until proven guilty. No one here is arguing otherwise. At this stage in the investigation, there has been nothing to link Vijender Singh to heroin beyond some vague allegations by a man alleged to be a drug dealer and Ram Singh, a fellow boxer and sparring partner. While Vijender has been questioned by the police, he has not been charged with anything, though he did refuse to give samples of his blood and hair during the process of questioning in Panchkula without giving reasons for doing so. For all we know, Vijender’s name has simply been dragged into this mess by association. If that is the case, the police investigation will clear him in due time and we can all move on with clear consciences. [caption id=“attachment_657499” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Former multiple world champion Oscar de la Hoya admitted to drinking before fights. AFP[/caption] But there is reason to be cautious. Boxing, especially professional boxing, has a long history with drugs. And we are not talking about your run-of-the-mill journeymen pugilists here. We are talking a cavalcade of world champions who have admitted to abusing drugs and/or alcohol. Oscar De La Hoya was the “Golden Boy”, a multiple world champion who commanded some of the highest prize money in the game. Yet last year (he retired in 2009) he admitted to abusing alcohol before fights, saying he did it in a way it could not be detected. “We are very intelligent,” De La Hoya said. “We knew how to plan to work the system.” In the same interview on ESPN Deportes’ then new talk show “El Bar,” Julio Cesar Chavez, a fellow ex-world champion who retired in 2005, also admitted to using drugs and alcohol. “At times, I would leave spaces of a month and a half without using drugs or alcohol, but afterwards, I would shorten that time, he said. “Then later, it would be one month, 20 days, later 15 days. One week, four days, three days, so it would not show in the doping” tests. Hector “Macho” Camacho, one of boxing’s most entertaining champions in the 1980s and 1990s, won six titles in five different weight classes but struggled with drugs throughout his career. Ricky Hatton, who was awarded an MBE by the Queen, was admitted to a rehabilitation facility in 2010 for substance abuse. And who can forget Mike Tyson? Once the baddest man on the planet, Tyson said he was completely doped up on cocaine during the shooting of the Hangover, a Hollywood hit film. The lag time between fights – often many months – gives fighters the opportunity to indulge themselves. And let’s be clear, we are strictly talking recreational drugs here. This is not about performance enhancers. In De La Hoya’s case, he drank because he thought he didn’t to train as hard to win his fight with Manny Pacquiao, something that proved to be a terrible miscalculation when Pacquiao stopped him in eight rounds. In Vijender’s case, the suspension of the IABF left him training without a purpose. Suddenly, there was no reward for the punishing routine boxers put themselves through. There was no rationale for the suffering. Compounding the situation, heroin comes under in-competition testing under the WADA Code, so he cannot be tested to see if he has taken the drug. If he took drugs for adventure, as Ram Singh has alleged, he would certainly not be the first and he won’t be the last. None of which is to say he took heroin. Again, innocent until proven guilty. However, if it turns out he did do drugs, we should not be particularly surprised – there is institutional failure at work here, after all - and we should be wary of over-reacting. Yes, the law must take its course but expelling him from the National Institute of Sports (as has been done with Ram Singh), or preventing him from boxing again, is not the answer. More appropriate would be a suspension and rehabilitation. And possibly, though this is asking too much, a system that looks after our boxers rather than leaving them to their own devices.