New at Reason

David Weigel | August 2, 2006

Jacob Sullum races to the defense of Floyd Landis, and of dopers the whole world over.

Comments

Robert|8.2.06 @ 2:16AM|#

Actually athletic associations commonly do adopt rules prohibiting training using certain equipment, or beyond certain times, or longer than a certain amount of time in advance of the contest. I was just reading of a high school football practice in Virginia that started a minute after midnight on Aug. 1 in compliance with such a rule; they made it a public event preceded by a parade.

Or consider eligibility rules, which determine who's allowed to compete to begin with.

Meanwhile I'm still chuckling that someone would've thought you of all people would write of the size of someone's Chapstick.

|8.2.06 @ 2:42AM|#

Man testosterone is useless in cycling...people are just pissed another american won and that he is former mennonite.

|8.2.06 @ 2:45AM|#

Here's an interesting twist on the testosterone angle: how do you treat a transsexual athlete who was born a male, but is now competing as a woman?

This isn't a hypothetical situation, during the podium ceremony for a recent cycling race in Whistler, the winner of the race, Michelle Dumaresq, a male-to-female transsexual was confronted by the second place racer who wore a shirt with the words "100% woman".

Supposedly, male-to-female transsexuals lose muscle strength and have decreased supplies of oxygen flowing to muscles due to the loss of male hormones. On the other hand, Dumaresq looked to be a head taller than her two immediate rivals. That added height and build must provide some advantage. Do you think that the chemical purity demanded of athletes, where taking a Sudafed can be grounds for suspension should apply to this situation?

|8.2.06 @ 3:50AM|#

how do you treat a transsexual athlete who was born a male, but is now competing as a woman?

Ban them.

Seriously, this whole bending-over-backwards for the trannies is getting on my nerves. I know it's fashionable to be tolerant and pretend like wanting to rip out one's genitalia and pump one's body full of hormones to assist in the charade, is a totally healthy desire for an adult to have, but I daresay this emperor (or empress as the case may be) ain't got no clothes on.

|8.2.06 @ 6:18AM|#

ex Machina,
Actually, they already are banned in many sports. However, this became an issue because there are rare instances where there are female born with XY chromosomes rather than the normal XX. This is due to a failure during developmnet of an activation of genes that cause testicular formation. I remeber this discussion had come up during one of my biology classes where there was a female athlete born with XY and lived her whole life unaware of this condition.

|8.2.06 @ 6:34AM|#

Performance enhancing drugs are considered "bad" in a way other forms of training are not is the widespread perception that such chemical training is a shortcut that compromises the athlete's health. Athletes that do not wish to engage in unhealthy practices should not have to be put in a position where they seem required for success. That's the concern that's driving the anti-dopers. Perhaps this perception is overblown, at least in the case of certain forms of doping. Sullum's case would be more effective if he least acknowledged this perception and made some argument against it.

|8.2.06 @ 8:08AM|#

If trannies are indeed banned from sports, what the hell is up with professional "women"'s baskeball?

As far as Landis, OF COURSE he has more testosterone. We're talking about an American being compared to Euro-girly men.

|8.2.06 @ 8:20AM|#

Why don;t they just create 'classes' of competitors...you can have the purists and the unlimited classes with all manner in between...each class can detail what is and isn;t allowed...just like autoracing.

|8.2.06 @ 8:29AM|#

gaijin, you may be on to something.

|8.2.06 @ 8:55AM|#

Let's level the playing field and let everyone put rocket boosters on their bikes as well. What the heck? Just let them drive the Tour de France.

Am I being over the top? Call me a chemical purist, or whatever, but I agree with the "broadcasting a sporting event, not a pharmeceutical competition" sentiment: the fun comes in the discipline, training and effort, culminating in an event. I get that drugs don't make you Superman, but they sure are the quick and easy way to get "an edge".

|8.2.06 @ 9:13AM|#

I'm also with gaijin.

The problem is that I'm pretty sure this isn't just a matter of league rules, which are a private matter for mutually consenting parties blah blah blah. Many performance-enhancing drugs are regulated, at the very least as prescription drugs. Congress has threatened to get more involved in the matter if baseball doesn't improve things.

My hunch is that if we had two leagues for a sport, one with pharmaceutical enhancement explicitly allowed and one without, the enhanced league would be harassed by the law, and laws might even be changed to outright ban the enhanced league.

|8.2.06 @ 9:20AM|#

"I know it's fashionable to be tolerant..."
Tolerance isn't a fashion, and it isn't something that can be changed with the season. Hey, relax, nobody is forcing you to be a worldly, intelligent person. Those trannies are a real problem!!

As for the Landis story, I suspect that the vast majority of money made in sports has to do with marketing products and marketing them to kids. Therefore, major athletes need to compete in a model way for kids. It's all about the kids!! Goddam kids.

|8.2.06 @ 9:25AM|#

This discussion has me thinking... we should, for once, get ahead of the curve and ban cyborgs from competitions.

I can't stand cyborgs... with their cheesy Belgium/Austrian accents.

|8.2.06 @ 9:35AM|#

The doping scandals in pro cycling make me ill. but as a cyclist and a huge fan of pro racing, I am biased.

I'm with Randian on this one (perish the thought! :-) ). I am an amateur mountain bike racer and off-road triathlete. It is mostly for fun for me - I get my butt kicked up an down trails every other weekend by women who are faster than me, but then again, they have 30+ hours a week to train. I do not. I do the best I can by riding as much as I can, training smart with the time I have available, and eating clean. I think a spot on the pro circuit could be available to me if only I could place higher in the USAT and NORBA sanctioned races. But if placing higher meant compromising the honest hard work I do within the limited time frame I have by taking drugs (beyond my daily cuppa joe or some Aleve for muscle soreness), I would feel like a fraud.

FYI, in pro bodybuilding there are classifications that "tier" competitors - some comps are "natural" where they test for steroids and other drugs, some are no holds barred - you can pump as much HGH into your system to get you huge and it is OK - and levels somewhere in between, where certain Performance Enhancing Supplements but no steroids are allowed.

I think the idea of having certain competitions designated as "natural" or "enhanced" (for lack of a better term) is great. Let the people who want to let their genetics and their training duke it out, and others who want a boost from drugs or HGHs can go compete against each other in other arenas. It levels the playing field.

|8.2.06 @ 9:59AM|#

AmyLou, great thread, why not let the market decide which kind of sports to push? I know it's an SNL skit, but I'd watch the all-steriod olympics, especially the LSD Snowboard Comp.

|8.2.06 @ 10:19AM|#

Lamar, good point. If there is money in the marketing and people demand it, why let drug use stand in the way? Pro cycling is not huge in America, but elsewhere in the world it is as dominant as baseball or football is here. Fans know doping occurs, sponsors know doping occurs, team owners know it (secretly I think they encourage it and spend $$$$ on docs who can dope riders and hide it). Yet fans still flock to races season after season. The history of cycling is riddled with use of cocaine, amphetimines, steroids, etc. as far back as the 1920s (before there were sanctions against drug use in pro cycling). It will never really go away, so perhaps the best solution is to embrace it, and divide the races into natural and enhanced categories. Let the fans decide who is more riveting to watch. It may be that Natural will get respect in the long run (i could only dream).

|8.2.06 @ 10:20AM|#

gaijin & lamar:

The All-Drug Olympics!

Dennis Miller: In response to what its sponsors claim is an idea whose time has come, the first All-Drug Olympics opened today in Bogota, Columbia. Athletes are allowed to take any substance whatsoever before, after, and even during the competition. So far, 115 world records have been shattered! We go now to correspondent Kevin Nealon, live in Bogota for the Weightlifting Finals. Kevin?

Kevin Nealon: Dennis, getting ready to lift now is Sergei Akmudov of the Soviet Union. His trainer has told me that he's taken antibolic steroids, Novacaine, Nyquil, Darvon, and some sort of fish paralyzer. Also, I believe he's had a few cocktails within the last hour or so. All of this is, of course, perfectly legal at the All-Drug Olympics, in fact it's encouraged. Akmudov is getting set now, he's going for a cleaning jerk of over 1500 pounds, which would triple the existing world record. That's an awful lot of weight, Dennis, and here he goes.

[ Kevin steps aside to reveal the steroid-bulked athlete bent over to lift the 1500 lbs. weight. Sergei tightens his grip on the barbells and pulls up, but instead of lifting the weights, his arms are pulled off and blood squirts ferociously out of his pulpy stubs.

Kevin Nealon: Oh! He pulled his arms off! He's pulled his arms off, that's gotta be disappointing to the big Russian! [ Sergei's trainer wraps a towel around him ] You know, you hate to see something like this happen, Dennis! He probably doesn't have that much pain right now, but I think tomorrow he's really gonna feel that, Dennis! Back to you!

Dennis Miller: Thank you, Kevin. Very nice form on the Russian. Canada, of course, is leading that competition.

That last was a Ben Johnson reference, of course.

Kevin

s.m. koppelman|8.2.06 @ 10:27AM|#

The trouble here, and the reason I can't even get on board with something as simple as getting government out of athletic doping regulation, is the cascading effect that allowing doping would have on lower tiers of a sport.

If it was just a matter of adults -- pro athletes or otherwise -- doping, I really would have trouble caring, beyond making sure dopers carry their own additional health care and related costs stemming from the health problems they're more prone to down the road.

Where I get stuck, though, is what it implies down the athletic chain. If the top-tier pros are doping, the farm-club players and other low-tier pros follow suit in order to have a chance to break into that top tier. Next on down are the college athletes, the local and regional semipros and the ranked amateurs, all doing so to keep up with those among them who aspire to advance to that higher tier. Then you get into the ones aspiring to be at that level: the high school athletes, the junior-division competitive athletes, the aspiring Olympic athletes with day jobs or (if you're a gymnast or figure skater) the eighth grade to contend with.

Allowing doping at the pro level increases the incentives for doping at all lower levels. At any level you choose to draw the line -- intercollegiate? High school? Little League? -- the pressure on every stakeholder, athletes, coaches, parents, school administrators, to circumvent it will be overwhelming, as it is with any of the other arbitrary prohibitions Mr. Sullum regularly rails against.

By prohibiting it at a sport's highest levels on down under penalty from expulsion from competition -- which I'd much prefer to see without government involvement -- it at the very least limits the greatest pressure to dope to the top competitive tiers where the decision to cheat at the risk of serious cardiovascular and renal damage is at least being made more often by adults, and by a smaller pool of people regardless.

|8.2.06 @ 10:54AM|#

In the 1960s, Tour de France riders ate sandwiches and bananas. Now, they eat stuff like GU and Accelerade. Those are certainly non-natural performance-enhancing substances. While WADA can arbitrarily ban some substances and not others, I remain unconvinced that allowing athletes to use some substances will create a race to the bottom that will destroy sports competition as we know it.

|8.2.06 @ 11:34AM|#

is the cascading effect that allowing doping would have on lower tiers of a sport.


At high-school age and below, I don't believe this is an issue. I think current policies at most high schools carry stiff penalties for abuse of regulated substances by students (most of whom are minors).

At the college level, we're dealing with adults who are, in theory anyway, free to decide for themselves. Let the various schools decide what conference they want to be a part of: a liberal-arts-doper school or a more conservative-antidoper school...they can play against like minded conferences. The same way the 2nd tier athletes at the Ivy League schools get to play against each other while the pretending-to-be-students who are athletes at the major conferences get to train for the pro-contracts on the school's dime.

|8.2.06 @ 11:55AM|#

Being a former competitive cyclist and also a former baseball player, the drug issues in these two sports really bug me, but it's hard to find an argument that really works.

The oxygen room exampe is a good one. Also, I used to take a couple of NoDoz before a race to get the heart rate up (coffee would upset the stomach during a race). It was a performance enhancer for me, plain and simple.

In the end, I think you just have to have a list of allowed substances/practices, and a list of non-allowed substances/practices. It migth not be perfect, and might seem inconsistent, but short of allowing everything I just don't think there's a solution (and gaijin's idea, while perhaps sensible, is a non-starter, it just will never even be considered).

s.m. koppelman|8.2.06 @ 12:29PM|#

Gaijin:

The trouble is that if college athletes were allowed to dope, it's reasonable to expect that high school athletes jockeying to get college spots would, too. There would also be plenty of incentive for the schools, coaches and trainers looking for glory (and bonuses), and parents with dreams of full scholarships, to encourage it.

Bottom line is, when an athlete's ultimate ideal is a steroidally-enhanced body, the pressure will be there to start doping as early as benefits are possible, and those who don't will be shut out of all of the higher levels of their sport. Short of putting coaches, school principals and high-pressure parents under surveillance, I don't see another way to disincentivize these groups from pressuring kids from getting that early start. If caught, any of them can point fingers and ultimately, the only one who would face punishment in nearly all cases would be the kid.

It smacks of senseless restrictions on consenting adults; it's the very definition of nanny-statism. It is. But banning use of the stuff at all competitive levels is the only way I can see to keep it in check at the pee-wee-through-high-school levels.

|8.2.06 @ 12:44PM|#

In addition to my instinctive "who cares" reaction regarding doping, I believe that the prohibition effect of driving the process underground causes more harm than good, particularly at the lower levels of competition. Prohibiting substances, as most of us are aware, does not remove them from the world, it merely makes their acquisition and use less orderly.

I would prefer to see an NFL (or Tour de France) wannabe being dosed and monitored by a doctor, rather than by one or more teammates who know little more than he.

|8.2.06 @ 12:46PM|#

Cycling's limits on testosterone are so high that an athlete can easily use testosterone every night but be below the limits the next day. I would have to believe that most cyclists make use of these high limits.

Landis is blaming alcohol for the high testosterone ratio. That's probably not high enough to bring it up that high, but coupled with a daily testosterone regimen, it might be. (And add to that the ability to easily plant substances, like Gatlin is claiming.)

Taking testosterone every day is definitely a performance advantage. Having a large amount of testosterone for one single day is not. Landis likely enjoyed no advantage over his competitors -- he just got caught. Now if he tested high every day of the race, maybe he had an advantage, but he was high only one day.

|8.2.06 @ 1:38PM|#

probably, the best, most surefire way to get drugs out of sports, is to get money out of sports. i don't know if that would actually work, but I'm pretty sure that nothing else will.

it's also hard to see how it makes sense to ban using substances, or training regimens which have no potential ill effect on the body - EPO, altitude rooms, extra hours on the road or in the gym. this tilts the scales firmly in the favor of those who have 'natural' body chemistry which lends itself to success in a particular sport. at the end of the day, it seems more interesting to me to - and more fair - to ensure that victory and success stem from an less predictable mixture of nature and nurture; a wider range of victors and aspirants will only serve to enrich the sporting world.

oh, it will also be rather hard to decriminalize doping - for the same reasons that it will be difficult if not impossible to decriminalize recreational drugs in the u.s. - there is an established industry whose sole reason
for existence is detection, prosection, elimination, punishment for use or offense...