Schoeman will now be ‘one of those guys’

For some athletes, a career packed with success can be ripped away in a moment, and years of good memories can be scratched and replaced by one bad move.

For all he achieved after spending 14 years in the cut-throat National Basketball Association league, Lamar Odom will best be remembered for his post-career exploits.

Former gridiron running back Ray Rice was also considered a hotshot on the field, but his temper at home was his ultimate downfall.

Another American, swimmer Ryan Lochte, did enough to keep his head afloat through most of his career, but not even his Olympic gold medals were enough to save him from himself.

Of course, there are more extreme examples of athletes who have destroyed their images with sideline shenanigans – perhaps Schoeman will now be ‘one of those guys’ most notably the notorious liar and cheat Lance Armstrong, dog fighting ring leader Michael Vick and the unsettling enigma that is OJ Simpson – but let’s not compare apples with oranges.

For the milder of the international sporting hooligans who have lost their way, however, it hasn’t required a crime quite as extensive as murder to derail their careers or destroy their reputations.

In the case of Odom, all his efforts to stand out on the court were overshadowed by a late night arrest and a drunken stupor.

Rice will never again be referred to as a talented football player.

Now he’s the guy who punched his wife in an elevator.

For Lochte, who probably couldn’t have been helped anyway, it took the bizarre tale of a fake armed robbery to give his fans enough reason to turn their backs on him.

Much like Lochte, Roland Schoeman hasn’t always been well liked by everyone in the sport, albeit for different reasons.

While Lochte is swimming’s version of a clown on crack, Schoeman is pretty much the opposite.

He’s firm, stern and to the point.

Never shy to speak up against authorities in defence of himself or other swimmers, Schoeman has never really been embraced by local officials due to his candid approach.

Add to this the distance that exists between himself and his home country, with Schoeman long having been based in the United States, and you can’t really blame him if some FOMO starts to creep in and he gets a little snappy.

For all the criticism he has dished out over the years, however, Schoeman was always well respected.

A three-time Olympic medallist and multiple former world record holder, he was so good at the freestyle at his peak that he earned the right to be grumpy.

But now he’s got some explaining to do.

On Saturday, Schoeman released a statement insisting that he’s no cheat after being banned for one year after testing positive for a prohibited substance.

He said a batch of supplements he was given were cross contaminated and this was apparently taken into account by world governing body Fina when they handed him his sanction.

Yet unless the sporting fraternity consider that excuse being cooked up by angels in heaven, he will likely forever be remembered
for this blemish on what was an otherwise spectacular career.

Despite all his success over the last 20 years, Schoeman will probably be remembered as “one of those guys”, not for the years of hard work he produced and results he delivered, but for one instance of madness.

It is possible he has been doping for years (though there is no evidence of this) or maybe it was just a once off lapse in judgment, but it doesn’t matter now.

Odom is a drug addict, Rice beats his wife, Lochte is an idiot and Schoeman is a dope cheat.

Whether he bounces back from this ban or not, it’s going to leave a very ugly mark on his career and it could hang over him as long as his name is synonymous with swimming.

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