If you want Vivaldi or Wagner or Lloyd Webber, go figure skating. Snowboarding's sound tracks are different. Last week at the Olympic snowboard park, as riders launched into the air like skateboarders in the 120-m halfpipe course, Pearl Jam and Metallica ruled. Several riders chose as their personal song the rap group Cypress Hill's Hits from the Bong. That was appropriate. The International Olympic Committee had been hoping to create a buzz and draw in a generation of sports fans used to pierced noses when it added snowboarding as a full-medal sport to the Nagano Games. And buzz it did.
Three days after Canadian Ross Rebagliati took snowboarding's first-ever gold medal in the giant slalom, the I.O.C. asked him to give it back. The 26-year-old from British Columbia had tested positive for marijuana (a urine level of 17.8 nanograms per milliliter, exceeding the 15.0 limit set by snowboarding's Olympic governing body, the International Ski Federation), and after a 3-to-2 vote, the I.O.C.'s executive board recommended he be stripped of his prize. Rebagliati admitted to having smoked in the past, but he asserted that he had not sparked up since April 1997, claiming to have ingested the offending substance as secondhand smoke at a farewell party thrown by several friends in his home ski resort of Whistler, B.C., on Jan. 31. Though journalists saw this as a Clintonesque and laughable defense, the Canadian Olympic Association filed an appeal on Rebagliati's behalf. And the word among snowboarding's tight brotherhood in Nagano was that no one was going to accept any prizes they didn't earn if the giant-slalom medals were redistributed.
Then came the next twist. A day later, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that because there was no formal agreement between the I.O.C. and the I.S.F. to ban marijuana outright, the I.O.C. could not legally strip Rebagliati of his medal. I.O.C. medical guidelines, which ban everything from cocaine to some cold remedies, qualify marijuana as "restricted" and a substance to be used "cautiously," while I.S.F. rules name pot as a prohibited drug. Said the panel: "We cannot invent prohibitions or sanctions where none appear."
Meanwhile, the Canadian Olympic team came up with medical evidence to back Rebagliati's claims. Carol Anne Letheren, chief of the Canadian Olympic Association, said that a single joint would bring an athlete's level to 400 ng/mL but that just being in a room with eight to 10 smokers an hour a day for six days could result in levels over 100. Ronald Alkana, professor of molecular pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Southern California's School of Pharmacy, said that marijuana's primary active ingredient, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), can be stored in the body's fat cells for relatively long periods and that "it's reasonable to assume that secondhand smoke could be absorbed." After the final ruling, Rebagliati remained cool, redisplaying the medal he had kept in his pocket during the three-day fracas. He said he would join in some antidrug campaigns but refused to condemn drugs outright. "I am definitely going to change my life-style. But I will not change my friends," he said. "I will stick by them." He added, "I may have to wear a gas mask from now on."