Kiosk - Riding the Wave: A Swimmer's Fight to Live Above Water (page 2)

Riding the Wave: A Swimmer’s Fight to Live Above Water
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Shortly after 4 o’clock, swimming warm-up laps at the Soka University pool, Kicker thought to himself, I fucking hate this. I really don’t want to do this anymore. I just want to be alone. The desire, the camaraderie and the fun had vanished. Kicker lifted himself out of the pool. Water dripping from his 6-foot-3-inch, 195-pound frame, he approached Salo.

“What’s going on, Kicker?” Salo asked.

“You don’t have to ask me any questions, Dave. I just don’t want to be here right now. It’s not doing me any good this afternoon.”

On Friday afternoon, June 20, Kicker flew into Indianapolis to attend his hearing before an AAA panel to determine his future. Joining him were Salo, his parents and two lawyers: Mike Eubanks, a Vencill family friend, and Howard Jacobs, who had been hired just a week earlier to handle the case.

Jacobs had represented nearly 30 athletes in doping cases, more than eight of them involving the cross-contamination of supplements. Because Jacobs had represented high profile athletes, including sprinter Tim Montgomery and cyclist Tyler Hamilton, Kicker expected him to be arrogant, even macho. Instead, he was a small man with piercing but kind green eyes.

June 21 was emotionally the longest day in the 24-year life of Kicker Vencill. The hearing started at 8 a.m. in a conference room at the Westin Hotel and proceeded for an exhausting 19 hours.

Jacobs intended to prove that Kicker’s drug test had been positive because a supplement he took was contaminated. The level of NA-19 detected in Kicker’s urine sample, 4 ng/ml, was an indication. It was the lowest positive level Jacobs had ever heard of. According to Jacobs, injecting norandrolone would have produced more than 100,000 ng/ml of 19-NA in a urine sample one day later.

The FINA rules clearly stated however, that: “Doping is a strict liability offense; that is, a doping offense has been committed where a prohibited substance, in this case the anabolic 19-norandrosterone, in excess of 2 ng/ml was present in the in the athlete’s urine sample, whether or not the athlete knowingly used the prohibited substance. In other words, proof of the presence of a prohibited substance in the athlete’s urine sample is all that is required for an offense to be established.”

Jacobs and Travis Tygart, the USADA director of legal affairs, spent most of the day thumb wrestling over various legal technicalities: Did Dr. Don Catlin, director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, follow the proper test procedures when analyzing the B sample of Kicker’s urine? Could the norandrolone level in Kicker’s urine specimen have been produced endogenously, since the concentration level of 19-NA in the sample fell into a so-called “gray zone” of between 2 and 5 ng/ml?

Jacobs argued the points to no avail.

At 11 p.m., after nearly 12 hours of expert testimony, Kicker was finally called to the stand. According to the official AAA arbitration ruling, he offered a detailed description of his achievements, his life-long aspirations to represent the United States in the 2004 Olympic Games and the sacrifices he had made to realize his dream. Then Jacobs questioned him about supplements.

“How common are supplements in the sport of swimming?”

“I would say that a majority of post-graduates do some form of supplements.”

FINA rule DC 9.10 says: “Every competitor has the personal responsibility to assure that no prohibited substance shall enter his or her body.” Tygart presented Kicker with e-mails and press releases issued by USADA containing warnings about supplement use. He would recall asking Kicker whether he’d received the warnings.

“No,” Kicker replied.

He couldn’t distinguish one document from another. For 12 hours, it seemed he’d listened to a stranger call him a liar and a cheat. He was angry. Why is he on me like this? he fumed to himself. I haven’t cheated. I never injected steroids.

The hearing adjourned at 2 a.m.

When it resumed later that morning, Jacobs and Tygart presented their closing arguments.

As he listened, Kicker thought to himself: I’m done.

That afternoon, he flew home to California in first class. He slammed down half a dozen gin-and-tonics. He stumbled off the plane.

Beth and Andrew Priest, his roommate, met him at John Wayne Airport.

Kicker spent the next day, his 25th birthday, with his head under a guillotine, anticipating the AAA ruling. The call finally came while he was cruising up the 5 Freeway from San Diego, where he had taken Beth to the airport so she could return to Tucson.

The AAA panel had suspended him for four years.

The official Arbitral Decision and Award said: “The Respondent’s testimony that he had never been told or received any communication that supplements might be contaminated is simply not credible... There is no evidence, nor do we have any reason to believe, that the Respondent intentionally took supplements that were contaminated. We do believe, however, from the evidence presented, that in using supplements and declining to test them, the Respondent was negligent.”

Kicker had been expecting to cry. Instead he felt numb.

Later that evening, his mother called. She had heard the heartbreaking news from Eubanks, the family’s attorney friend. She wept.

Kicker would never forget her words: “I feel as a parent that your father and I have lied to you.”

“Mom, what are you talking about?”

“We’ve always told you growing up that if, morally, you made the right decisions, if you did the right things, said the right things, if you were a good person, that good things would happen to you. Well, you did all those things, and look what happened. I just feel like we’ve lied to you.”

Jacobs, his attorney, suggested appealing, but Kicker wasn’t keen on investing any more of his parents’ money – or his own emotions – on an appeal. In all probability, he thought, it would yield a similar result.

Jacobs told him about a laboratory, Aegis Analytical, in Nashville, Tennessee, that would test supplements for $250 a bottle. Did he want to check it out?

Kicker didn’t care. But he wouldn’t stop his parents if they were willing to put up the required $1,500.

On August 4, Jacobs left Kicker a message. It was urgent.

Kicker dialed his number.

“We got the test results back from Aegis,” Jacobs said. “EAS ZMA: negative. Ultimate Nutrition Glutamine: negative. Ultimate Nutrition Maximum MSM: negative. Ultimate Nutrition Super Complete multivitamin: positive for norandrostenedione, androstenedione and androstenediol.”

“Oh, shit. No way!”

Positive. Proof that the Super Complete had been contaminated. And he hadn’t known it.

Kicker’s happiness was short-lived, however. He had missed the Pan American games, which were supposed to have been the last ridge on the way to the summit that is the Olympics.

Beth remembers being frustrated with Kicker’s melancholy.

“Kicker, you have to move on with this thing.”

“Well, it’s only been two months.”

“You know what, when is it ever going to be enough time? You’re going to be saying this forever. You need to get over it. There are a couple of things that you need to realize, and you need to realize it now. You didn’t get to go to the Pan Am Games. You aren’t going to swim the Olympic trials next summer, and you’re not going to the Olympics.”

Kicker’s appeal loomed over him every day in the pool. He continued to train with Nova, but his head was not in it.

Every couple of weeks, he would break from his routine and drive to Tucson to be with Beth. One day in early November, Salo confronted him:

“What’s going on? You’re missing practice a lot. I want you to understand this, Kicker. You have your appeal case in November, and we have to think long term. What if things go your way in November? Let’s hope that they do. What if you’re on your way, and you’re not training, doing the things you need to do? What if you do get to swim Olympic trials? I want you to be ready.”

Kicker started to cry. “Look, Dave, I’m sorry. Maybe I am running away from my problems. Maybe the reason I go to see Beth in Tucson is because I want to get away from swimming.”

“I like having you as a part of this group,” Dave replied. “We still want to have you around.”

On Friday, Nov. 17, the day before his appeal hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Denver, Colorado, Kicker went to Tucson. He took Beth up to Mt. Lemmon, where they’d had their first date. Overlooking the city of Tucson, he asked her to marry him.

With tears in her eyes, she said yes.

Kicker flew to Denver the next morning.

With the proof of contamination, Jacobs hoped, Kicker’s suspension would be reduced to the minimum of one year, making him eligible for Olympic trials the following June. USADA didn’t challenge Jacob’s presentation of the Aegis lab’s detection of contamination. However, Tygart, the UDADA counsel, was adamant: Kicker should be denied any reduction to his suspension.

Tygart cited DC9.10 of FINA rules: “The minimum may be lessened if the competitor can clearly establish how the prohibited substance got into the competitor’s body or fluids and that the prohibited substance did not get there as a direct or indirect result of any negligence of the competitor. Every competitor has the personal responsibility to assure that no prohibited substance shall enter his or her body.”

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