Competitive edge goes beyond the needle
By Matthew Black
The Peak (SFU)
March 25, 2009
 BURNABY (CUP) – The outcry following Alex Rodriguez’s forced admission of steroid use was as predictable as it was misguided.
While fans and media ready their moral torches and pitchforks in anticipation of what promises to be yet another baseball season where the stories off the field supersede those on the field, the opportunity to reassess the role of steroids in sports has once again been passed by.
Four years ago, HBO’s Real Sports investigated the health effects of steroid use on healthy adult males – importantly distinct from women or teens of either gender.
The report concluded that there was no direct scientific evidence linking regulated use of anabolic steroids to death or even serious health problems – a shocking conclusion that was grudgingly confirmed on the same program by Dr. Gary Wadler, the chairman of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
Why then, if steroids are not nearly as harmful as they are widely perceived to be, are they still against the rules?
Like many poor decisions, the one to outlaw steroids was based on emotion rather than rationality.
The frail, haunting image of former NFL player Lyle Alzado, who attributed his eventual death from brain cancer to his extensive history of steroid use, found itself on the cover of Sports Illustrated and made a heart-wrenching, if not fact-based, case that steroids kill. Under-reported, however, was the fact that Alzado’s own doctor refused to link steroids to the cause of death.
Similarly, the infamous images of a hulking Ben Johnson breaking the 100-metre world record, and his subsequent sheepish admission of guilt, seemed to show how steroids create an unfair and unlevel playing field.
Unsurprisingly, the second- and third-placed competitors in the same race – American Carl Lewis and Brit Linford Christie – were both found to be guilty of steroid use, albeit over a decade later.
If anything, the cases of Alzado and Johnson show that it’s clearly time to abandon the whoppingly naive notion of the clean-and-level playing field.
From our knowledge of ancient times when Greeks would drink “performance potions” and Mayans would chew cocoa leaves prior to competitions, it is evident that performance-enhancing substances and an unlevel playing field are as old as sport itself.
While steroids undeniably constitute a competitive advantage for some athletes over others, so to do countless other aspects of sports. For instance, scientific testing of the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit worn by American swimmers at the 2008 summer Olympics revealed that it could reduce a swimmer’s time by almost two per cent.
In a sport where hundredths of a second are an eternity, surely this was a competitive disadvantage for other athletes, but nowhere was the protest that such suits should be outlawed.
Let’s not forget we live in a society where everyday performance enhancers are rampantly used by people from all walks of life.
From caffeine for energy, a synthetic multivitamin for health, or Nyquil for better sleep, few can gesture to the moral high ground of drug-free lifestyles without a sizable degree of hypocrisy.
It further becomes hard to take the war on steroids seriously given the widespread collusion in support of performance enhancing drugs at all levels of sport: a fact most evident in the widespread acquiescence or apathy to steroid use in professional baseball. No more ink has to be wasted by listing the generation of major leaguers, both superstar and scrub alike, linked to steroid use.
The players’ apathy aside, the commissioner and owners didn’t care as long as juiced-up players put fans in the seats. Managers didn’t care as long as steroids resulted in improved player performance, generated wins, and thereby kept players and managers alike in their jobs. TV networks and fans didn’t care as long as juiced-up players kept driving up ratings and bashing homers.
Not only did baseball not care about steroid use, they didn’t even want to acknowledge the problem. Jose Canseco’s 2005 book, Juiced, after initially being panned as the writings of a personality desperate for money and the spotlight, exposed the widespread use of steroids in baseball. Even the players’ union has repeatedly fought against any drug testing during collective bargaining negotiations.
Outside of baseball, the world didn’t seem to mind the rampant steroid abuse by athletes on both sides of the Cold War during the politically charged Olympic Games of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Likewise, few seem bothered at the casually veiled steroid use found in the histories of sports such as wrestling, swimming, and football.
Couple this public apathy with the reality that the testers have always been one step behind the juicers and the war on steroids makes even less sense.
This inability of the authorities to develop a system that consistently catches steroid users means that many athletes are forced into taking the drug given the good possibility that their teammates and opponents are also juicing. It’s not hard to see how for many players, their livelihoods depend on what comes out of the needle.
The failures of prevention and the apathy of all concerned dictate that it is time to re-address the issue of steroids in sports. The discussion on steroids and not the various other performance enhancing drugs or methods such as human growth hormones and blood doping where the medical evidence is far less benign.
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