It was just a cough syrup: The doping athlete’s excuse

Thulaganyo Jankey | Wednesday October 29, 2025 06:22

In fact two of them! Almost every year now one of our athletes is busted for doping. This is not news anymore. Experts warn that if this trend continues, the public may begin to experience ‘news fatigue,’ a condition where headlines are met with eye-rolls, sighs and the phrase ‘Tell me when something actually happens.’ The announcement was met with the same level of shock as discovering that politicians enjoy lying and cats hate water. Media outlets have stopped writing new doping scandal scripts. ‘We just copy-paste the last one,’ admitted a producer. ‘Insert name, sport, banned substance, and tearful apology. Boom — done before lunch.’ Usually the athlete will release a statement that goes something to this effect like: ‘My fans, my team, the esteemed members of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), I am today, utterly heartbroken, to address this completely unprecedented and, frankly, baffling situation. Let me be perfectly clear: I have never intentionally taken a performance-enhancing substance.’

At this point we the fans want to believe him/her. We start saying things like • ‘He’s never even seen a needle.” • ‘He’s built differently. Like...maybe he’s part cheetah’ • ‘He only drinks water blessed by Daddy Bushiri.’ How could they even accuse the poor athlete of such a heinous transgression? We start suspecting a Western plot to stifle African competition through unfounded allegations.

WADA, of course, like that battle-scarred know-it-all uncle will be shaking their head with that ‘we’ve heard these denials before’ face.

The next line of defence is the social media public. They start by blaming the caffeine-boosted energy drink that is sold at the station, Reboost.

Reboost tends to be one of the biggest culprits when our athletes are caught doping and you will hear people saying this beverage should be banned and the vendors removed completely from The Station together with their ensnaring floral language.

The athlete will then say something like they are pinning their hopes on sample B to prove their innocence. More often than not sample B test comes out positive and the disgraced athlete slinks off into the Disgraced Dopers Dungeon – a black hole where athletes who have been caught doping are condemned to for years.

The athlete will assure the public that he/she will fight the suspension, not for himself, but ‘for every honest athlete whose Reboost and Dibete concoction has ever been tampered with by an overzealous street pharmacist.’

He/she promises to conduct a full internal audit of his/her kitchen, vowing to henceforth eat only air and possibly purified water, just to be safe.

There was a time when most athletes blamed cough mixtures for their transgressions. Some smart athletes started needed cough syrup before major competitions.

I am talking about the same sticky, grape-flavoured syrup your mom gave you when you sneezed in the 80s. But with time WADA quickly wised up to the shenanigans and delivered a chilling warning ‘from now onwards no more getting coughs before competitions and no more taking cough syrups –especially grape-flavoured ones’. The cheating athletes hobbled off and started blaming contaminated meat.

WADA should respond by launching a new initiative: ‘Operation Common Sense’, which includes pamphlets titled; • ‘If It’s Injected and Glows in the Dark, It’s Probably Not Legal’ • ‘If It Has Been Procured From A Pharmacist Who Has Zero Medical Training, Stay Away From It’ • ‘If It Has No Label, Run’ At this rate they might have to split the Olympics into Clean Games (For those who believe in hard work, spinach and tears) and PED Games (for those that want to see someone bench press a rhino).

(For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) *Thulaganyo Jankey is a Rapporteur and training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email admin@ultimaxtraining.co.bw