Sport inspires great passion and emotion. Fortunes can turn in a heartbeat on the race course—the hero may falter, the underdog triumph, or the favourite may own the day. Moments of brilliance or lapses in concentration during a hotly contested race may change an athlete’s life forever. Sometimes, though, lives change before the athlete even gets to the start line. That’s what happened to Kelly Guest six years ago.

To better understand his experience, try putting yourself in his shoes.

It’s 2002 and you’ve busted your ass for the past four years and all those long hours of training have manifested into the chance of a lifetime. You’ve just finished second at the Triathlon National Championships and earned the right to represent Canada at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England. This is your first major international games; your dreams are coming true, and you can’t wait to show your family and the world what you can do.

You arrive in the athletes’ village rested and in shape, full of anticipation. The next morning you go for an easy run with some of the other Canadian athletes. The legs feel good, and you’re ready to race. That afternoon you get ready for the first big event, the opening ceremonies. Thousands of people crowd the stands, flags waving proudly.  Moments before you join your teammates, one of the team managers intercepts you and tells you that you need to sign some paperwork before the opening ceremonies. It’s an odd request, but you happily oblige. You’re escorted to a trailer at the edge of the athletes’ village and greeted curtly by a couple of official-looking individuals.

And then the shit hits the fan.

You stand there without the faintest idea of what is about to come, a life altering moment that will change the course of your destiny forever. And then you hear the words that no athlete ever wants to hear: “You’ve tested positive for steroids.”

“My first thought was, this must be someone’s really bad idea of a hazing ritual,” Kelly Guest explained one June afternoon from his home in Victoria, British Columbia. “Then they went into the details of it all. I had never heard of Nandrolone, nor did I know how it got into my body.”

The next forty-eight hours were a nightmare. Guest was held in the trailer under security, feeling confused, sick, and scared. After all the athletes had left for the opening ceremonies, he was escorted back to his room to pack his things. A shuttle took him to a nearby hotel where he was placed in a room under police guard for the night—no family, no friends, no real explanation of what had just happened. “At one point I went into the bathroom and contemplated killing myself. I was afraid that my family wouldn’t believe that I didn’t do it. I was hysterical.”

To this day the cause of the positive drug test remains a mystery. Guest has spent countless hours and a small fortune (with legal bills upwards of $20,000) defending his integrity and trying to clear his name. Adding to the drama, the Canadian Cattleman’s Association threatened to sue Guest over some comments he made during several interviews. “At the beginning we were reading anything and everything we could find on Nandrolone. One source said that people could unknowingly eat meat which had been subjected to steroids. I mentioned this in a few of the interviews that I did. Shortly thereafter the Canadian Cattleman’s Association called me and threatened to sue me for defamation of their product and name. They really had not done their homework, as I said in the interviews that I travelled around the world for eight months of the year, and never once said I thought my positive test was a result of the fine beef from Canada. So, they dropped the threat.” Guest admits that this was one of the lighter moments of the whole ordeal.

After a long drawn-out hearing process, a judge exonerated Guest, saying that after reviewing the facts and the evidence he believed unequivocally that there was no intention to cheat. Unfortunately, this did not lift the ban or clear Guest’s name outright as the judge felt he could not deny the science, and the science said that he had an amount over the limit.

But is science really so cut and dried? According to Guest, new research has led to some interesting developments. It turns out that urine with extremely high pH can lead to “False Positives.” Is this significant? The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) seems to think so. Two years ago they contacted Guest to ask permission to test his B sample from 2002, as they suspected that he could have fallen victim to the unstable urine scenario. The new test results were inconclusive, which begs the question not how he tested positive in 2002, but whether his was a false positive? Despite the uncertainty, the CCES has decided not to expunge Guest’s record, and his positive test from 2002 still stands. Although Guest is not dwelling on the events of the past he is unwilling to accept this conclusion and as such will continue the fight to clear his name.

What’s amazing is that, despite all the madness, he still managed to get himself out of bed on most days and keep training during his two-year ban. He got a job at a local running shoe store, started a youth triathlon group, and started a “beer league” cyclocross series called “You’re an idiot if you sue me, cyclocross series,” which was a huge success. It cost one dollar to enter each race, just enough to cover the beer for the winner. The races were held at secret locations and announced the day before. Riders would show up and get one guided loop before the race start. Locations ranged from school playgrounds to public parks where cycling was prohibited. It was a rebel league, and the only rule was that you didn’t talk about the league.

Guest is the first to admit, however, that he was a mixed bag of emotion and motivation. There were the highs of the cyclocross league and his youth group but also the lows of constantly being reminded that he was a criminal in the world of sport. “I was all over the shop: some days I was strong, some I was a mess. The day of the Cancun World Championships in 2002, my new coach and I went for a mountain bike ride in the morning, then out to a restaurant for lunch, where I drank eighteen Guinness, three double Bloody Marys, and two Martinis. I felt really crappy the next day.”

I don’t think anyone in the triathlon world thought for an instant that Guest had purposely taken a banned substance. “Honestly, I was and still am amazed at the overwhelming positive support. There was a handful of bad stuff, but so much good from across the city, country, and even world—it was pretty amazing!” It certainly changed many perspectives on the issue including Guest’s. “Before Manchester if you had asked me what we should do with someone that produces a positive drug test, I would have said, ‘String them up by their testicles and throw rocks at them.’ To me it seemed so black and white.”

Despite the ordeal he is still a staunch supporter of drug testing. “I truly and honestly believe we need to have drug testing in sport. I do think that it is a sad comment on the human race that every facet of our lives (including sport) has to be monitored so we don’t cheat or hurt someone, but the truth is there are people that would and still do. Drug testing is important and a must in sport.”

Guest has taken a very negative situation that could have destroyed him and created one of the strongest youth triathlon groups in the country. Several years ago he was approached by a parent to coach her two children, and since then the group has grown in numbers to the point where he now has to turn kids away. He has a full contingent of twenty exceptionally keen young athletes ranging from ten to sixteen years.

From day one he wanted the original members to have some ownership in the process so he let them decide the team name. After about a week they came back with “Kelly’s Kids.”

“Really, you can pick anything! I am flattered but you can pick anything: The Sharks, the Tigers, anything!” But it was Kelly’s Kids that stuck, a sign of the respect the kids had for him.

Aside from the fact that his group is thriving and backing it up with strong results, Guest’s real goal is much more grounded. He wants to promote sport and play to a younger generation. He wants to show them how fun and rewarding it can be to work hard at something and enjoy the process. It would have been easy to become jaded and move on entirely from athletics, but at the core of the matter is a guy who just loves to be fit and have fun. Based on the success of his group, those ideals have proved very contagious. “Sport for life! I want the kids to share my love of sport, and I am successful if they stay involved in any sport for the rest of their lives.”

And so his journey in sport continues on a new path. Last year he was named Triathlon Canada’s Off Road Triathlete of the Year and he continues to string up great results in the muddy world of Xterra racing. But it is a legacy with young talent that is his true focus and he loves every minute. Life unfolds in strange ways. Sometimes we can’t possibly comprehend what good can come from a bad situation. Coaching was never really in Guest’s plans. It became as much a financial necessity as it did an emotional rescue. His passion for the kids’ group stems from the fact that they still do sport for the pure love and enjoyment of it. There are no hidden agendas and no baggage. It is play for the sake of play. Six years later Guest admits to being happier than ever. The events that unfolded in 2002 still haunt him, but there is little time to ponder the past when you are caught up in the contagious energy of the athletes of the future.

About the Author

Jasper Blake was the winner of 2006 Ironman Canada. His participation in multisport and a 2007 trek to Everest Basecamp has introduced him to a range of interesting characters.