Quick on the trigger

There’s a famous comic strip about the break-up of the Beatles. It starts with the four of them standing there looking pissed off. In the next panel, Ringo is gone, and in the next, George. And then in the last, John is gone, and Paul is standing there alone. At which point, he screams, “I QUIT THE BEATLES!”

The USOC’s ban of track and field coach Trevor Graham seems worthy of such a cartoon to me. In it, you would have Graham with the endless parade of big-name athletes who have been caught doping or accused of doping on his watch – Patrick Jarrett, Michelle Collins, the Harrison twins, Jerome Young, C.J., Dennis Mitchell, Tim and Marion, and of course, Gatlin.

Then, in the last panel, Peter Ueberroth steps up and decisively declares, “TREVOR GRAHAM IS BANNED FROM ALL USOC FACILITIES STARTING NOW!”

Way to go, USOC. You see a guy with eight years of non-stop blatant doping offenses and BANG!… he’s gone like the wind.

Track Coach Graham Is Banned by USOC (L.A. Times)