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I M P R E S S I O N S
Enhanced For Your Viewing Pleasure An issue that haunts modern sport — and one that will be much discussed as part of the Winter Olympics — is the role drugs play when it comes to athletic performance. In an interesting way, the question took center stage at the Super Bowl, when the subject of Patriot Tom Brady’s injured ankle was raised. Brady was still suffering from the injury that took him out of the Jan. 19 game against the Oakland Raiders, but that didn’t stop him from playing in the Super Bowl, or from going on to be named Most Valuable Player. He was portrayed as having great courage for playing with the injury, and television commentators pointed out that he wisely "took the needle" in that ankle to minimize the discomfort. Brady wasn’t the only one. The Rams’ Kurt Warner needed the needle for his sore ribs. Pittsburgh Steeler running back Jerome Bettis took the needle the previous week for his groin injury, and when the needle hit a nerve he was temporarily paralyzed and unable to play. It is clear that many players take the needle at some point in their career, and many of the greats of the past took injected or oral painkillers with some frequency. "If it wasn’t for these shots, a lot of guys, I mean hundreds of guys, wouldn’t be able to play every week," the Rams’ defensive back Dexter McCleon told the New York Times. "I would say half the teams in football wouldn’t have enough guys to play on Sunday if it wasn’t for those needles." The dangers in this are many, both short term and long term. Chronic arthritis is common, early death is a statistical reality. Those players who have suffered long-term effects are nearly unanimous in their belief that it was worth it. The culture of sport is to play with pain, and this is seen as an important value. How you play with pain is another issue, and one that needs further public discussion. When Tom Brady is held up as a model for taking the needle on Super Bowl Sunday, it seems ludicrous to pick up the paper in the days following and read about athletes being barred from competition for taking performance-enhancing drugs. If you need a painkiller to compete, surely that painkiller becomes a performance-enhancing drug. Yet what we will see and hear throughout the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City is the denunciation of performance-enhancing drugs and the banning of athletes who are detected using them. In his State of the Olympics address in Salt Lake City on Super Bowl Sunday, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, identified "doping" as the single greatest threat to the games. He said that doping was an attack on "ethics and fair play," and a "direct attack on the health of the athletes." He also described it as a "mortal danger to the credibility of sports world." This is hyperbole of the worst kind. Performance-enhancing drugs have been a central part of the Olympics and all sports, and they have not killed the games. They are, in fact, no more than a minor distraction. The Olympic officials run the tests, the athletes find ways of beating the tests. Some athletes get caught using the drugs and are sent home and/or banned from their sport. Sometimes this is legitimate, but clearly at times it is not. There are always cases of inhalers being used for asthma or allergies that register some obscure banned substance. When these things occur, the entire Olympic movement is made to look ridiculous. More to the point, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has become a necessity, since Olympic athletes fear they if they don’t take the drugs they will lose to the athlete who is. You don’t want to allow to your fellow competitor to have this kind of winning edge. So the testing will go on to no apparent end, and the detectors will continue to fight a losing battle with the detectees. The human growth hormone (HGH) and the newer insulin growth factor (IGF) have both been undetectable in the past. Now, apparently, they are not, but even as this is written there are people hard at work out there in search of new drugs and new masking techniques to defeat the IOC. This cat and mouse game seems a terrible waste of time and energy. Technologies, training techniques, and dietary regimes have all been highly developed to produce the winning edge. Drug use is no more an objectification of the athlete as these legal techniques, and in many cases no more hazardous to health. It’s time to throw in the towel. Let’s open up the games to any and all drugs the athletes want to use and see how far greed and vanity can push young athletes to go in the pursuit of the winning edge. It may be the only way to guarantee a level playing field. Richard C. Crepeau is a professor of history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando
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