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Canada starts getting tough on drugs

Broadcast Date: Sept. 28, 1986

The careers of six of Canada's best amateur athletes are all but over. Three weightlifters, two shotputters and a discus thrower have been given lifetime funding suspensions for using steroids. Federal sports minister Otto Jelinek announces the harsh sentence in the hopes that it will set Canadian athletes on the straight and narrow. But as we hear in this report for CBC Radio's The Inside Track, many of those athletes believe steroids are the only way to win.

Canada starts getting tough on drugs

• Beginning in 1983, Canadian athletes who failed a drug test were suspended from government financial support, including grants, travel funding, access to national coaches and sports centres for a minimum of one year. Athletes caught using steroids were given automatic lifetime bans from federal programs and benefits, as were athletes failing a second test.

• On July 16, 1986, federal sports minister Otto Jelinek announced lifetime bans from federal support for weightlifters Jacques Demers, Glenn Doods and Matio Parente, discus thrower Rob Gray, and shotputters Mike Spiritoso and Peter Dajia. This essentially ended their careers.
• The weightlifters were also given two-year suspensions from competition by their national association. Demers and Parente had earlier been charged and acquitted of importing steroids at Montreal's Mirabel Airport.

• Otto Jelinek and his sister Maria, both figure skaters, came to Canada from Czechoslovakia in 1951. They were Canadian Junior Pair champions in 1955 before joining the senior circuit where they claimed four silver medals and the 1961 and 1962 Canadian Senior pair crowns. They became World bronze medallists in 1957 and 1958 and silver medallists in 1960, before winning the World pair title in their native Prague two years later.

• After retiring from amateur competition in 1962, the Jelineks went on to enjoy a six-year professional career. They were inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1962 and the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1994.
• Otto Jelinek later became a federal Cabinet Minister in the Tory caucus and served as Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport from 1984 to 1988.

Canada starts getting tough on drugs

Medium: Radio

Program: The Inside Track

Broadcast Date: Sept. 28, 1986

Guest(s): Robert Dugal, Robert Gray, Otto Jelinek, Mike Mercer

Host: Mark Lee

Duration: 11:15

Actuality courtesy of the Commonwealth Games Federation.

Last updated:
May 29, 2009