Survivor: Gabon’s Crystal Cox (Sort of) Admits to Steroid Use

Crystal Cox appeared on Survivor: Gabon in large part because she was a gold medal winner in the 2004 Athens Olympics, having won as part of the 1,600-meter relay team. And yet while she was on the show, it seemed like she couldn’t win anything in the various challenges. Perhaps we now have our answer why, as she has admitted to doping with anabolic steroids.

The Associated Press reports that as she signed a document admitting to doping, Crystal also accepted disqualification of her results from 2001 through 2004 (the period during which she admitted to using steroids) and a four-year suspension. I’m not sure what the point of the suspension is, since she’s no longer a runner – even when she was on Survivor, her occupation was listed as Former Olympic athlete, with her bio further noting that she “currently works as childcare teacher, high school track coach and a professional athlete.” I’m not sure what she was doing as a professional athlete, but I would have to guess she won’t be doing that anymore – nor will she likely be coaching track. I mean, that would be like hiring a known and now-admitted steroid user to be the hitting coach for a professional baseball team. Oh. Wait.

But we’re not talking about Mark McGwire – that’s a situation that has been well addressed by sports writers. As for Crystal, her gold medal will almost certainly be stripped. And what’s worse is that this could even result in the stripping of gold medals from her teammates, who did nothing! Some historical cases have resulted in teammates on relay teams losing their medals (the Marion Jones case from Sydney being a prime example) while others have not (Jerome Young, running for the men, lost his medal but his teammates did not) – Cox, like Young, only ran the preliminaries and not the finals, so it’s possible that her teammates will not lose their medals.

So it’s not clear what will happen here. But as U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive officer Travis Tygart told the Associated Press, “if you're going to succumb to the temptation, you have to remember the terrible position you're putting your teammates in.” USA Track and Field spokeswoman Jill Geer added, “Unfortunately, when one athlete cheats, all the other athletes lose out, whether it's their teammates or their competitors. They're all cheated out of something.”

In an odd turn of events, shortly after the news came out that Crystal admitted to doping, she turned around and claimed that she had never used steroids! She claims that it would have been too difficult to prove her innocence, so she just admitted it, saying, “I can sit and preach I am innocent and have never used steroids but proving my innocence was difficult without the money or the resources, going against a goliath like the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).” She added in an e-mail that was intended for family and friends but ended up in the press, “I fought as long as I could and tearfully signed the sanction ... but knowing in my heart and every fiber of my being I was innocent.”

The USADA disagreed, saying Crystal could have taken her case to an independent body for a decision rather than signing the document. As Tygart told Reuters, “She acknowledged her use of anabolic agents in violation of the rules. We have a signed document. … [The ban] is unfortunate but she had full due process, was represented by counsel, and had every opportunity to go to an independent group of people that would ultimately decide her sanction.”

It should also be noted that this was not Crystal’s first run-in with banned substances. In 2002, she was disqualified from a race and given a warning by the USADA after testing positive for ephedrine, a banned substance.”

So what do we make of all this? Well, the fact that this article appears here in the Reality TV Hall of Shame should be an indication of what we think. Yes, it’s possible that Crystal simply decided it would be easier to admit to something she didn’t do and get on with life, and I’m sure that situation happens in courtrooms all the time. But the USADA spokesman noted that there were other avenues she could have gone down to try to show her innocence, and it’s not really clear why she was so worried about a ban when she’s not an active racer anymore anyway.

To me, this smells funny. She signed a document admitting her guilt and accepted a punishment. Doing so put all her teammates at risk, so it would be an incredibly selfish thing for her to admit to something she didn’t do and put all of them in a bad situation if she just wanted to move on with her life. I think we have to go with the official document she signed, admitting that she cheated.

In which case, we see that Crystal’s cheating led to a gold medal, which then was essentially the reason she made it on to Survivor. Throughout her time on the show, we saw her talking about how she had been a gold medalist. Now, as RealityNewsOnline writer William Hammon put it, this was all “only to find out she cheated in her one significant achievement in life.”

Back when Crystal was on the show, viewers marveled at just how bad she performed during challenges. As we all knew, she was an Olympic gold medalist! When she was voted out, I asked her in my interview (http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl?mode=1&article=article8574.art&page=1) what happened. She claimed, “The challenges are not devised for everyday things that people do. They were hard as hell. For a person who’s been in tip-top shape, those challenges were hard.” Now we are forced to wonder if a large part of not being “in tip-top shape” was due to no longer being on steroids.

Some of her other statements from that interview become very ironic as well. For example, Crystal told me, “[In my outside life,] I was never in a situation where I was among a bunch of losers. Success breeds success and for me to be among a situation where we were constantly losing, it was hard. I had to dig deep, pull from home and my family.” Except we now find out that when it looked like she would not be able to be a winner in her track days, she doped so she could be one. Not exactly the kind of digging deep she led us to believe she was capable of.

And then, of course, there is this doozy: “People who know me personally know I’m a good person.” I’m sorry. But good people don’t cheat to win. It’s just that simple.

Crystal Cox doped herself with steroids to become a better runner and help win a gold medal. Because of that performance, she made it to Survivor. On the show, she was a horrible performer in challenges, causing us to wonder at the time what was up – and now to wonder if her doping played a role.

Now that she has admitted to her cheating, Crystal is being punished by the appropriate competition agencies. It’s too late to remove her performance from Survivor: Gabon, but it seems like inducting Crystal into the Reality TV Hall of Shame is the least we could do. She certainly deserves her place here – and more.

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