USA Insider No.148: Stewart’s Hell

Welcome to our weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto’s USA Insider presented by Ipone. Penned each week by our man on the ground, Transmoto’s US Correspondent, Jason Weigandt, the USA Insider presents the story-behind-the-stories of the AMA supercross and motocross scene.

This James Stewart business isn’t going to go away anytime soon. He raced this weekend at Muddy Creek, and the racing Gods threw down the typical storm via a pair of first turn crashes. First turn crashes are the “It rains, it pours” curse of this sport. The crashes kept him off the podium, away from the spotlight and TV cameras and press conferences, and Stewart also produced a statement. Now the long process begins, and the hype around this story will die a bit while we wait. He was obviously darned fast as he came from way back to fight for the top five in moto one, and would have done the same if not for another crash in moto two. The skills are still there despite the drama surrounding him, but this weekend he got to go low profile.

I talked to a lot of people about the Stewart situation over the weekend. It’s hard for anyone to be an expert in the complex code of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the FIM’s rule book — let alone the relationship between those groups and the US Anti-Doping Agency and the two AMAs — the regular American Motorcyclist Association and AMA Pro Racing, which was actually sold by the AMA and is now owned by the same folks who control NASCAR (I detailed that complexity last week). In addition, no one outside of Stewart’s inner circle knows the behind the scenes details. However, enough people have read enough to realise that the rules are fairly clear on this situation, and things like amphetamines are very clearly recognised on the banned list — in fact, the anti-doping code even specifically mentions “ADD or ADHD” treatment. Stewart, in a statement he released, admitted he was using medication for an attention disorder. In addition, riders told me that when they’re going through drug testing, the testers immediately ask if they’re on any medication. Also, the rumours say Stewart’s banned substance could be Adderall (although it’s hard to know for sure, the only public info from the FIM says amphetamines, so it doesn’t specify. Adderall is just a collection of ingredients, a test wouldn’t show the drug specifically as much as just a collection of ingredients that would indicate what it is). Adderall isn’t the first level of treatment for ADD or ADHD, which means someone has to have earned more advanced treatment, which makes it even stranger to think that an athlete would go through that process without ever even realising that the anti-doping folks should know about it.

Of course, amphetamines aren’t PEDs as we know them — this isn’t HGH or EPO or steroids. That’s why it’s possible to explain things ahead of time to avoid such conflicts. There are plenty of opportunities for an athlete to explain this situation in advance — but now it seems like Stewart is trying to come-from-behind in a much more critical fashion than he did in those Muddy Creek motos.