Drugs - we're losing

As a casual observer I look at these events as though everyone is already on some form of drugs. I have no doubt that in 10 years we will hear about the likes of Bolt, Blake, Wiggins etc being investigated for something and I won't be shocked when some (most?) of them are found guilty.

What's the arguement against steroids, EPO, HGH etc though? That it allows people to push beyond 100% of what is 'natural'? How do you define that?

If Cadel Evans woke up the morning of a race and took a panadol would that be cheating? That headache might have prevented him winning the race but because he took an un-natural substance he was able to compete at a higher level than what his body would've 'naturally' allowed.

What about the AFL players who get pain killing injections during games? Are they cheats? If it's too painful to play without pain killers then shouldn't stay off the field?

Races, events, matches, games, whatever you watch or whatever you call it, everything has been decided by some form of chemical stimulant or suppressor taken by one or more participants so I say go the other way - open slather for any and every advancement of the human body.

Low oxygen training, blood doping, gene manipulation and of course, every kind of needle, pill and anal seppository known to science. Go the whole 9 yards. I don't care if guys are juiced up to the eyeballs with bull shark semen, if they manage to run a sub 9 second 100m race I will still have my mind blown!

At some point in sports you have to have rules defining the equipment - you can't use a cricket bat 12 inches wide, you can't use a pushbike with a motor (though there are rumours!).

The human body is the basic equipment we all have and use for sport - so it's fair enough we set some limits as to how much you can 'improve' the human body. Now you can argue about those limits (blood levels for endurance athletes, vitamin supplements, caffeine stimulants), but at some point, you have to set limits. Those are the rules of the game. At the moment, the rules say 'Panadol is allowed - EPO is not'.

If you don't have limits (rules) the race is just won by the person who is first to get hold of the latest gee-whiz superman supplement (or cricket bat, or golf club, or swiming cossie) - and he wins until the next person comes along with the better one.

So we set rules - arbitrary, sure, but all sporting rules are arbitrary. With drugs, there is an added extra consideration of potential health risk, so that makes setting the limits a bit more involved.

I don't have a problem with drugs per se - it's your body, do what you want with it. But drug cheats are sports cheats - they destroy the sport - if you cheat by taking illegal drugs, there is no competition. If you want to play the sport, play by the rules. If you get caught deliberately preparing to cheat (such as doing a course of drugs) - piss off out of the sport.

I will answer this bitb of your post with something I wrote on page 21 of the Armstrong thread in the cycling forum.

Cycling doesn't need steroids and anarobic power. It needs endurance, high VO2 Max levels and aerobic capacity. EPO killed at least 18 young riders in the peak of their fitness in the late 1980's early 1990's.

How many people have died of steroids?? Maybe they need to be controlled like the doctors in cycling control EPO, blood transfusions and other drugs.

From Blood Sports - The inside dope on drugs in sport. Page 2 and 3 re the EPO epidemic

On 27 February 1990, Lisa Draaijer was woken by an unusual noise coming from her husband, Johannes Draaijer, a champion Dutch racing cyclist, lying next to her. At 27 years of age he was at the peak of his physical fitness. But this night he was gurgling and the air seemed to be rushing too swiftly from his lungs. Johannes had finished 20th in the 1989 Tour de France. When he had taken a full medical in a month prior to the race, doctors had given him the all clear. But now he was lying in an odd position, barely breathing. Lisa tried to wake him, but his body just slumped back, lifeless. There was no response. The ensuing autopsy described Johanne's demise as 'cot death.'

This was just the beginning of an epidemic of 'heart failure' that cut a swathe through young, fit and healthy cyclists in the late 1980's. In total five Dutch cyclists died in 1987; in 1988 a Belgian and two more Dutch riders died. In 1989 five more Dutch died. And in 1990 two Dutch and three Belgians died.

It mattered little whether they were asleep in their beds or furiously pedalling their bikes. The killer was silent, it was unexpected and it left the devestated parents, friends and sporting authorities with the suspicion that their treasured children, siblings and colleagues had 'over doped.'

At around the same time, a new wonder drug to treat chronic renal disease and anemia had been released onto the market. The drug was known as erythropoietin or simply EPO.

Word spread quickly throughout the sporting world of the new drug's wider applications - because it stimulated the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells, it meant the user benefitted from more oxygen in the bloodstream and, as a consequence more stamina. All that was required was three or four self administered jabs a week - far easier than autologous blood transfusions, the popular doping method of the time - and in a matter of weeks, athletes could enjoy up to a phenomenal ten per cent improvement in performance.

For elite sportspeople the world over, EPO was liquid gold - effective, affordable, irresistible and best of all, undetectable. As the Belgian cycling champion Eddy Merckx, once infamously said, 'You don't win the Tour de France by eating sandwiches and drinking mineral water.'

couldn't agree more. well said.