Olympic Roundtable

There's greatness at every level of athletics, whether it be as a 5-star quarterback for a Texas high school football team, or the strongest kid in a neighborhood game of tug-of-war. But there's greatness that's fleeting, forgotten in a day or a year, and then there's legendary greatness, which we had a brush with as we sat down with our Olympic Roundtable. We were surrounded by athletes that seized their opportunity to be remembered forever: Bruce Jenner, Greg Louganis, Bob Beamon, and Mark Spitz, and we took full advantage of the opportunity to pick their brains. Read on for our unedited transcript of our MF Olympic Roundtable.

MF: One of the biggest new events lately was Marion Jones and her admission that she used performance-enhancing drugs, and she was stripped of pretty much everything. We want to get your general thoughts on that particular case. Do you think the penalties fit? And we want to see where sports is now in the realm of whether or not it can get through this performance enhancing drug thing.

Bruce Jenner: Go for it.

Greg Louganis: Who, me? I know a lot about that stuff, with diving. There's a real advantage to being a 200-pound diver. Real small splash with that.

Jenner: So you're going to pawn this off on me, Greg? Well, I guess you're throwing this at me. The whole thing is sad, there's no question. Marion Jones is not a bad person. She's a good person. You get to that level, you're going to push the envelope as far as you can push it, and obviously, she went over the line. She's going to have to pay for that, but the bigger question is, is drug testing, with the Olympic sports, it's like the Olympics Achilles heel. It is the right thing to do, but it's also our biggest P problem.

14,000 athletes go to the Olympic games, 2 get caught, and the entire story is about the two that get caught.The media is all over this stuff. But I commend what our Olympic organization is doing, trying seriously to control this issue. I mean, they're real serious about this. They're not fooling around. You can be walking down the street, and a testing guy can come up to you and tell you to go in the bottle, and you have to go in the bottle, or else you're gone. Cycling is kind of the same way. They've done their best to try and keep it as clean as possible. So they're doing a good job of trying to keep it a fair playing field. The problem is, not only for the athletes that do get caught, but it becomes a big PR problem for us.

To be honest with you, if the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball had to live under the same standards that we live under, they would all be gone. They couldn't do it.

If you've got marijuana in your system, you're gone. I mean, come on. The NBA? I mean, right there. Not even talking about performance-enhancing stuff. It is a big issue in sport. Unfortunately, we get a lot of the blame for it,and that's always the first question we're asked, whereas if it was a football player they wouldn't be asked the question and the problem is much worse.

But we don't mind standing here and speaking up to it. Yes it is the right thing and I'm glad they take it to a high standard.

MF: One of the things we were talking about is whether or not the Olympics were ahead of the curve because they've been testing for so long whereas now baseball and others are...

Jenner: Yeah, they're doing – they're kind of playing around with it, and if you're really obvious, they may go after you, but to be honest with you, they're a unionized sport. The unions don't want it. The owners don't want it. The owners could care less if they're on something. They want to win football games. They could care less. Unions? They don't care. At that level in that sport, you almost have to take a lot of stuff just to survive, you know? They're so big and strong, you almost have to do something just to survive.