Is there life after drugs in sport?

quote:

Clearly the sport has been infested for years and the taking of drugs is probably the rule rather than the exception in my opinion.

Sadly, I think you are correct. Even the most gifted and morally pure are sucked in by the pressure to win and the abundance of coaches prepared to offer chemicals as a solution.

1988 was a watershed year for athletics. Ben Johnson's positive test at the Olympics lead to widespread out of competition testing for the first time and this transformed women'sathletics. Many of the records in the power field events and sprints look faintly ridiculous now.

But this has not stopped the chemist's progress and the number of sub 9.9 second times in the men's 100 metre sprints clearly indicate that the labs are still making rapid progress.

Much as we would like to believe that only bad people chose to cheat this has largely been proven to be wrong. Behaviour and morals are not absolute and tend to be a function of circumstances. With the current rewards for winning and chances of escaping punishment for testing positive being rather good I really cannot see drugs being eliminated from sport.
John

John

quote:

But this has not stopped the chemist's progress and the number of sub 9.9 second times in the men's 100 metre sprints clearly indicate that the labs are still making rapid progress.

It's tough call this one. There is no doubt that the training methods and understanding of nutrition used in the mid 80's look archaic compared to that available today and this is particularly true in the sprint events like the mens 100m where sub 10 secs in now just an entry point to be a really good sprinter. That said there are clearly a good number of cheats of still out there.

Looking at this side of the pond, there is a huge amount of controversy over the use of steroids in baseball over the last 10 years. The fact that Roger Maris's long standing single season home run record has been broken (smashed really) a number of times since 1998 is testament to that. Now that the sport has been (largely) cleaned up it appears that no-one is getting near it once again.

Human nature being what it is, I'm pretty sure that people will always want to cheat to gain an edge.

Cheers

Jim

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The fact that Roger Maris's long standing single season home run record has been broken (smashed really) a number of times since 1998 is testament to that. Now that the sport has been (largely) cleaned up it appears that no-one is getting near it once again.

To me that seems rather odd, as the biggest challenge with hitting home runs is surely the hand eye coordination and timing necessary to connect cleanly with the ball, not brute strength.
John

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It's tough call this one. There is no doubt that the training methods and understanding of nutrition used in the mid 80's look archaic compared to that available today and this is particularly true in the sprint events like the mens 100m where sub 10 secs in now just an entry point to be a really good sprinter.

Up until 1983 you could count the number of athletes who had broken 10 seconds on one hand. Carl Lewis won the 1983 World Championship in 9.99, a time that now would look pedestrian. Something changed around about 1991 when sub 9.9 seconds times suddenly were achievable by most of the elite athletes (6 out of 8 finalists in the 100m World Championship) and again about 3 years ago when sub 9.8 time started to become common. I appreciate that training techniques have improved, but I would tend to associate such discontinuities with what came out of the laboratory door rather than what is happening on the training field.
John

On the face of it I would agree. Hitting a baseball travelling between 90 and 100mph (and moving vertiocally/horizontally or both!) is incredibly tough to do and does need tremendous hand/eye coordination. But given that steroids can help the fast twitch muscles reach that bit quicker and make them that much stronger is the "probable" reason for the improvement. Barry Bonds who now holds the record with 73 (vs Maris 61) has long been suspected as a cheat but nothing has been proven, makes exactly the same point as you regarding coordination.

There is an excellent Sports Illustrated article here about Bonds use of Steroids and a lot of background on the despicable Victor Conti, the owner of BALCO who provided drugs to Marion Jones. Nice link between baseball and athletics....even though I didn't intend it that way when I first posted.

Cheers

Jim

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Something changed around about 1991

Was this about the time that amateur sports slipped into shamamateur sports and the professional sports man started to become accepted and even allowed into the Olympics? With prize money and endorsements so close at hand and still only 24 hours in the day then something had to give. I am sure modern training helped but performance enhancing drugs are only drugs if they can be detected and I expect the official bodies are playing catch up when it comes to detection, enforcement of rules and punishment of offenders.

The official bodies could start by not letting drug test avoiders ever compete again or be managed by known drug abusers.

Sport for me is about human achievement.I feel that any sport where drugs are used makes viewing pointless and the sports reputation as a spectacle tarnished.
Imagine the thought if firms like Nike,Addidas,
Puma etc required a sports person to have a drug test before endorsing any of their products.

Are the drug enhanced athletes of today any different from those of the '60s & '70s? I feel those subjected to the state sponsored drugging can be thought of a victims of a State ordered experiments unlike those of today who do so of their own free will for whatever their reason.