Morning Steroids Dose: Chinese weightlifting

1.  Someone thinks the Chinese weightlifting team became too dominant too fast.  (Oberjuerge blog )

2.   The UK's judo athlete Peter Cousins missed 3 dope tests before Beijing. Chalk it up to youth.  (The Times Online)

3.  This guy is complaining about the effects of the Speedo LXZ suit on women athlete's figures...not enhancing. (Times on Line)

4.  Focus continues on the world's fastest athletes and doping as track begins in Beijing today.  (InsideBayArea)

5.  This is an older reference about the ethics of doping.  However this statement from an exercise physiologist is puzzling:

"The only things that can change it will be drugs and genetic engineering. So I think drugs will become widely used. In 100 years, people will laugh at us for trying to ban their use. Sport is the only activity where there is drug control. You can take drugs before playing music in a concert and no one questions it. You can take drugs to help you do your job."

Sports is not the only activity of drug control.  Drug control is called 'prescriptions'.  One can't just go out and buy some Adderall if that work report is late, nor can one buy some Ecstasy for a date.

Writers make these false analogies all the time.  No, normal people don't run out to their local Mafia drug dealer to deal for some illicit drugs because they want to achieve more at work...at least not where we work.

Taking HGH with nandrolone and insulin to gain an illicit advantage over your competitors does not equate to taking a Motrin for you headache. Such thinking leads to these disparaging thoughts:

But the consequence of this future tolerance, this throwing open of the doors that have tried to bar drugs from sport? Noakes is in no doubt on that subject. "To me, it is the death of sport as we knew it. But as I say, we came from the amateur era and this present situation is not sustainable. But maybe it won't worry the next generation and in 100 years, the generation won't give a damn, it will just be a spectacle. It's a surreal world we are talking about. Whether it will happen in my lifetime depends on what values the next generation has."

Comments

[middle aged mid packer]

"But maybe a guy 30 years younger than me may see it differently."
Heh - I think some of the slower sprinters who had a relay gold - and then lost it when Chambers was caught with his trouser leg rolled up - have publicly expressed displeasure.

The only way forward I can see is a mixture of frequent baseline tests, storing body fluids and re-testing retrospectively as new techniques are rolled out, and making athletes take out insurance against having to pay back all their winnings - plus damages to other participants and the competition organisers - when they get busted. If your baselines look fishy, the premium goes up...

[Millard Baker]

Re: "Sport is the only activity where there is drug control."

Your point about 'drug controls' existing in other aspects of daily life is well taken.

I came away with a slightly different interpretation of the point that Dr. Noakes was trying to make:

Generally, sports are one of the very few activities where "performance enhancement" is penalized when it involves pharmaceuticals. Most businesses are not going to penalize an employee whose work performance improves (regardless of the reasons why it improves). It is capitalism at work.

Even in other aspects of society, if pharmaceuticals improve sociability and interaction and functioning within society, individuals will not be penalized for use of performance enhancing drugs.

Society outside of sports generally does not penalize highly functioning individuals. Usually, only the dysfunctional elements of society are penalized for drug use. Of course, this is not an absolute truth; there are exceptions.