Letters

From the April 2003 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Most of Thomas' other swipes may well pass without comment. I will, however, express amazement at the notion that the only reason jurors would ever wish to take notes is to substitute for the functions of the written trial transcript they will have a chance to see later.

Steroids and Meatheads

Dayn Perry's "Pumped-Up Hysteria" (January) was a piece of sanity amid drug hysteria in barbell circles. I'm a former lifter who has taken steroids. I never saw a single case of steroid rage. In fact, I never even heard of one until the media wrote stories on it.

There are a number of arguments against steroid use, but they don't go far. Some say that it isn't fair to have an athlete assume a risk that is not intrinsic to doing the sport. Well, in the pole vault, today's fiberglass poles can break in midair, unlike the old stiff poles. You can land on your head. Is that intrinsic to the sport?

Is Astroturf intrinsic to football? Sports are always changing and are defined by the current practice at the highest levels.

When I was competing, I would have preferred to have the snatch and clean and jerk and not the press as competitive lifts, and to have had a weight class around 230. But in those days the class went from 198 to the huge guys. I had to force-feed and go up to 252 to have a shot. I wasn't coerced. That was just the way it was. When I retired because of a back injury, they introduced a 220-pound class, and later a 242 class, and now they are back to 231 pounds. They dropped the press in the mid-'70s too. Oh well. My lumps.

Finally, I don't think the Olympic Committee can say much about health concerns until they ban smoking. Many foreign lifters smoke. There was some hilarious hide and seek at the Atlanta games in 1996. The Turkish lifters wanted to smoke in between lifts, but the American aides were under instructions that no one could smoke indoors. It is quite something to go into the men's room and find the whole Turkish team in there puffing away.

Doug Stalker
Newark, DE

It is refreshing to finally read an article by someone who understands the lack of a steroid problem. I am a nationally ranked power lifter who took steroids and lived in the steroid subculture from 1979 through 1985. I know what a steroid body looks like, and they aren't in major league baseball.

I'm bothered by nitwit sportswriters who never touched a weight reporting about steroids. I am convinced that when they hear that a ballplayer is taking a pro-hormone they report it as steroid use. Anyone who ever took steroids knows that no one got big taking pro-hormones. They are a total waste of money. Creatine and even basic protein powders work much better.

The other point reporters fail to discuss is that pro baseball players are part of God's gifted world of special athletes who will generally benefit more from weightlifting than the average person. A strong athlete could easily, over the course of, say, six years, lift weights and eat high-density protein supplements and gain an average of five pounds a year. Yet some dorky writer comes along and says, "Barry Bonds is 30 pounds heavier than he was eight years ago so he must be taking steroids."

Russell Clark
Highlands Ranch, CO

Finally, an author has done some extensive homework instead of shooting from the hip! We athletes are infuriated by the media hype about steroids, which is myth-based or just plain nonfactual. I have written many letters to congressmen and sports writers in vain, trying to protest the damaging lies written about athletes who use anabolic enhancing drugs.

It is obvious to any real athlete that the media in general have absolutely no knowledge on the subject of physique-enhancing drugs. Yet they create public uproar, leading equally uneducated politicians to declare war on the drugs and the athletes who use them. It was former President George Bush who signed the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990, making steroids a Schedule III crime, equal to cocaine and amphetamines. Now Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Rep. John Sweeney (D-N.Y.) have taken the torch and are yelling from their soapboxes.

Other methods of physical enhancement, such as liposuction and implants, are all legal yet far more dangerous. Hormones for birth control or gender change are legal. Cigarettes and alcohol kill millions. Meanwhile, the great threat to athletes from steroids is only the possibility of being caught and arrested, and the fiasco that will follow.

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