The Remedy
Normally I hate Sally Jenkins' work, because her reporting on area teams is about as insightful and balanced as an episode of The O'Reilly Factor. However, when she focuses on broader societal issues, her writing becomes a lot more interesting. Her most recent national article justifiably turns the steroid/drug issue back in a direction I favor, which is to ask this simple question: where do we as a society draw the line? And why?
In her words: "Why are athletes the only hardworking professionals not allowed to enhance their performances, or to avail themselves of the most powerful medicines for their ailments, which is what many of these "drugs" really are? Lawyers win or lose cases often based on how many hours they can stay awake preparing. Try telling them they aren't allowed to take pseudoephedrine if they get a head cold.
"Show me an industry in which the vital players don't try to take every opportunity to give themselves even the slightest competitive edge, and I'll show you an industry that doesn't exist any more," Will Leitch of Deadspin.com writes in his forthcoming book, "God Save the Fan."
Jenkins acknowledges the two biggest arguments against allowing people to dope at will. One is that the kids might get the wrong example from their idols and role models. Well, she points out there are many things in society that are legal that we don't want kids to do. She's right.
The second is that we would be creating a system in which all athletes are required to use performance-enhancers in order to compete. But isn't that happening anyway? Regardless of whether you thin it is or not, she does point out the one fact that most people are unwilling to confront when discussing this issue:
"Anti-doping efforts rest on a basically faulty premise: That elite sport is an inherently healthy endeavor. Well, it's not. World-class athletes are in the business of torturing their bodies unnaturally. According to Mark Sisson, a former anti-doping official in the sport of triathlon, the consequences of training at that level is the dead opposite of physical well-being."
"All sport is an effort to alter the body and change its chemistry. Nice as it is to believe that it should be a matter of pure hard work, just look at how athletes starve themselves on extreme diets or swallow insane dosages and mixtures of vitamins, manipulating their intake and fuels in "legal" but hardly natural ways."
Any time any of us want steroids, we can get them if a doctor is willing to prescribe them to treat a condition. Well, pro athletes are often in a great deal more pain and face much higher demands from their bodies than we do. So why do we try to deny them access to these drugs and/or methods?
There's nothing natural about slamming into other human beings while wearing some plastic and foam padding. There's nothing natural about running 26 miles. There's nothing natural about the Tour de France. And there's never been anything "magical" about the athletes that have completed these acts.
Running a marathon might not kill you, but running a marathon race very well could. If it doesn't kill you, you might end up with serious long-term damage to your body that increases each time you do it.
Obsidian Hit Counter
since: 18 Oct 2004