Tea. Drums And Speed

by Les Broad

must be," Tony replied innocently, "but I train hard under good coaches. They know what my body can handle and what it can't. It's lucky, but give the credit to my coaches."

  The response was a grunt and a smile. Tony didn't like that smile.

  That night Tony didn't get to sleep nearly as easily as he normally did. His exchange with that journalist nagged at him; was there something more to the question and that look on the guy's face? Although a brilliant athlete Tony wasn't the sort of person who buys a newspaper. He'd been told often enough that what was written in them was more about selling papers than it was about reporting the truth, so he never bothered reading what was written about him or other athletes. And if he wasn't going to read that there was no point buying a paper or watching the news on TV. So he really didn't know about the whispers, the insinuations, that he might not be the clean individual he was held out to be. He didn't know anything about drug tests other than it being necessary to take one pretty much every time he ran, but he'd never heard anything about the results. Obviously he'd passed them all, because he didn't take any performance enhancing drugs. He didn't use any drugs at all.

  When he woke the next morning he was still concerned. His coach, with whom he breakfasted every day, seemed the obvious person to speak to so when they met up Tony was determined to raise the problem. His coach, Steve Naylor, was rather wiser in the ways of the world than his carefully protected protégé and, it has to be said, meal ticket; he spotted straight away that 'his boy', as he called Tony, was unhappy. But he said nothing and waited for Tony to tell him what was worrying him.

  At first they ate in silence, but that was just while Tony tried to order his thoughts. Finally, though, he put the question to Steve. "That journalist yesterday," he said, "what was wrong with him?"

  "Wrong?" Steve asked as casually as he could manage. "What do you mean, wrong?"

  "Well, he sort of looked at me funny. Then he smiled a weird sort of smile."

  "I noticed that. I guess it's just jealousy because he's not as good at his job as you are at yours, and no matter how good he might be he'll never make the sort of money you're making. That's all."

  "You sure, Steve? Are people saying things about me?"

  That was the question that Steve really didn't want to answer. He knew it would come because he'd heard the rumours, so he'd rehearsed the answer he intended to give. He rehearsed several, but none sounded convincing. Now he had to give an answer. "Obviously people talk about you, Tony. You're the best right now. That means everybody else is fighting to be second best and they're not happy about that. So they invent excuses. But pretty soon they find they can't go on saying they finished second because a hamstring or a tendon was tightening up, or they had a blister, or were suffering from 'flu. So, if they can't beat you when they're at their best you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing."

  "What? What are they saying I'm doing?" Tony was clearly becoming agitated.

  "Not 'saying', Tony, not 'saying' at all. But there are whispers, rumours. Nobody would come right out and say it, because they couldn't prove it."

  "What can't they prove?"

  "That you're taking some sort of new, undetectable drug."

  "I'm not!" Tony almost shouted his denial and sat back in shock.

  "I know, I know, and so does anybody who knows you. We all know you wouldn't, well, you don't need to, do you?"

  "Look Steve, you've looked after me for a long time now, tell me honestly, I'm winning because I'm good enough, aren't I? It's not down to anything else, is it?"

  "You win because you're the fastest, Tony. The team for the Olympics will be announced in a day or two." It was just the change of subject that Steve needed. He knew Tony would latch on to it, and he was proved right.

  "Will I be selected?"

  "Of course. We've got nobody else who'll even get close to the Americans, never mind beat them. You'll come home with a sprint double, you see."

  As the conversation turned to Tony's Olympic prospects his concerns drifted away; perhaps it was lucky that Tony's mind was unable to carry more than one concept at a time.

  Tony was indeed selected for the UK Olympic team; he trained hard, even harder than usual, to give himself the best possible chance of bringing home the gold medal that he wanted so much. His coaching team worked with him, protected him, cosseted him, made sure than nothing happened to disturb his focus or unsettle his mind. As a result it was a very happy and relaxed Tony Porter who boarded the plane: he was so focussed on himself that he gave the impression of arrogance to his teammates, but in reality Tony was existing almost totally inside his own head. If anyone had asked, he would have had no idea where in the world the Games were taking place; all he knew was that he was going to the Olympics and was going to win.

  He cruised through his heat with no trouble at all. By the time he was in the semi-final he had hardly broken sweat yet he felt less than well. Putting it down to nerves, he said nothing to anyone even when his legs felt heavy, his stomach felt so constricted that he could hardly eat and couldn't keep down what he did manage to swallow. He thought it odd because he'd never been nervous before, but then he'd never been to such an important event before. He kept telling himself he was just ten seconds away from the Olympic Final, twenty seconds away from the gold medal, but it didn't help. Out on the track again, due to run to earn that place in the final, he felt hot and a little bit shaky. He thought he saw his competitors looking at him strangely but it was just nerves. He was sure it was just nerves.

  Settled, more or less, in his blocks he waited for the 'set' command. His mind drifted; he thought to himself that he need finish no better than fourth. Odd: he'd never thought that way before. It was a thought that was still playing on his mind as the starter called 'set!' and he raised himself for his usual explosive start.

  The starter's gun fired.

  Tony wasn't ready. He saw the others go, realised he was last.

  Willing his body to make a bigger effort than ever before, he forced himself past other bodies.

  He crossed the line.

  Third and in the final. Job done.

  Then he collapsed.

  A wheelchair crunching on gravel was the only sound on a warm summer afternoon a year later. A nurse was pushing a young but broken man slowly across the forecourt of a secluded nursing home somewhere in the north of England.

  The man in the wheelchair moved, slowly and painfully, his muscles wrecked by the toxins that had built up in his body over the past few years. "Why," he thought to himself for the millionth time, "why did they do this to me? I was good enough, I was, I was! They didn't need to pump that stuff into me. I should have been in that final, I should have had the gold medal, but instead I was in some foreign hospital and now I can't even walk. Why? Why?"

  At much the same time Steve Naylor had just climbed out of his new Porsche and was watching his latest project, a girl of just fifteen summers, pounding round a running track. In his hand was a bottle of liquid. It was water. Well, water plus one or two secret little ingredients.

  Just The Ticket