Don Catlin- The Man Who saved Professional Sports

By James Blears

In 2018 The World Boxing Council held its Second Medical Convention in Cancun, which led to the creation of the WBC Clean Boxing Program a year later.

Today random tests  of  boxers are  submitted to the Voluntary Anti- Doping Association known as VADA, led by Dr Margaret Goodman.

Back then, the undoubted star of this pioneering life- saving initiative, was Dr Don Catlin who gave a lecture at this ground breaking Convention, to participants  Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman, Lennox  Lewis and three hundred doctors from eighty eight nations.

It was the result and the posthumous yet ongoing brainwave born from  one of the final and most vital initiatives of WBC Lifetime President Jose Sulaiman, who was determined that boxing should and would  avoid the life threatening blight filled path,  which cursed  athletics, cycling, weight lifting cross country skiing and other endurance plus strength sports, where a minority of dishonest, misguided  and short sighted young and impressionable athletes cheat,  artificially boosting  their bodies with performance enhancing drugs,  which wreak devastating long term effects on their very wellbeing  and shorten their lives for ephemeral, immoral  glory.

Don Jose died before this all came to fruition, but it was he and his visionary bravery plus the ongoing determination of  President Mauricio Sulaiman, which set the process in motion and has carried it through  for our very own Sport.

The warning signs had been there for years!  A survey of young athletes once indicated that most would be prepared to die in middle age if only they could achieve momentary golden glory in their youth. A terrible warning which was mercifully heeded.

Don Catlin showed his audience a photo of a marathon cross country sky race. The winner was smiling composed and upright, while the two runners were face down in the snow, gasping for air, after giving their all and more. Don asked us if we could see the disparity. He then revealed the winner had been stripped of his gold medal, as he`d  been  juiced up to the eyeballs with illegal drugs administered by so called members of the medical profession.

In my innocence and naivety, I asked him why it took time to detect new performance enhancing drugs. He sighed deeply  yet briefly,  smiled ruefully  and patiently explained that an evil minority of medical experts  design drugs with masking agents and properties,  making it harder for their honest colleagues who are the decent majority to detect their crimes.  But he vowed that the detection work would never cease, because the alternative was unthinkable.  On that lovely Mayan afternoon, the sun was starting to set, but it heralded a new dawn!

He himself cracked many of those codes as a medical detective. One syringe full of drug which he analysed  was Tetrahydrogestrinone,  better known as the infamous THG.  It`s unmasking and the identification of other illegal drugs forever  removes the baseless argument of detected athletes that they took them because everyone else did and the only way to win was to cheat.

Don Catlin, the  President and CEO OF LA`S Anti- Doping Research, was the founder of the modern anti doping test.  He opened his lab in 1982. It became the testing center for the 1984 LA Olympics, performing tests for the Olympic and Para Olympic Committes, the NFL, Major League Baseball the NCAA  and many other sports including Boxing.  A  benchmark of fair play.  You use…you lose!

Don who spent his life saving so many lives of young athletes,  died of a stroke on January 16^th aged eighty five. His family took time in announcing his passing, which is such a massive loss to the World of Sports and Humanity.

His Son Oliver who is following his dedicated work said: “My Father stepped out of the boundries  to say what needed to be said.”

We have just enjoyed a magnificent Super Bowl  Final which is drug free. Oliver  summed up this monumental achievement   by stressing: “We don`t have mutants dropping dead five minutes after stepping off the field. He found a system to find the drugs some players used and put a stop to it.

Oliver poignantly asks:  “How do you sum up a life that dramatically changed sports in the way most can`t see?”

Oliver…the only way is for us is to say a Sincere, Heartfelt Thank You to Don, because in so doing he saved countless lives.