“Drug-taking âEnhanced Gamesâ aims to rival Olympics with 2024 launch” reports the Telegraph. It leads with how the proposal has been denounced, but leaves itself some wriggle room in case the outrage leaves early.
London 2012 Olympic gold medallist Anna Meares has slammed a proposed new rival Games with no drug testing as an unsafe âjokeâ.
Meares, who beat Victoria Pendleton to the womenâs cycling sprint in London and was also a gold medallist in Athens, was responding to plans by the London-based businessman Aron DâSouza to stage an inaugural âEnhanced Gamesâ next year.
DâSouza says that the traditional Olympic model is exploitative and believes that, with no drug testing, events like the 100m sprint can be run in under nine seconds. The current official world record, set by Usain Bolt in 2009, is 9.58secs.
DâSouza argues that adult athletes should have the right to decide what goes into their bodies and that the current system has pushed the use of performance-enhancing drugs underground.
He hopes to stage the first Enhanced Games next December in track and field, swimming, weightlifting, gymnastics and combat sports and claims to have the support of several doctors, scientists and former Olympic athletes.
âAthletes are adults … and they have a right to do with their body what they wish â my body, my choice; your body, your choice,â DâSouza told the Australian Associated Press.
âNothing will improve the productivity of our society more than preventing ageing. It sounds like science fiction now but we live in the future, look at the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies. We believe that science makes humanity â and sports â better and fairer.â
If the rules of a given competition or league are clearly stated and impartially enforced I do not see a problem with this. It would be better and safer than the current situation in which performance drugs are taken surreptitiously by many. This harms honest sportspeople who do not take them and lose as a result. It has often harmed the cheats as well, because all the protocols that make it relatively safe to put foreign chemicals into one’s body when done openly for medical purposes cannot operate in secret.
And as Aron DâSouza says, adult athletes should have the right to choose what they put into their bodies.
I’m torn. The freedom side of me says Yes. However, we all know if this happens then this will then become the main one as it gets faster and therefore more ‘exciting’. New records will be made regularly for years and the unenhanced games will move to look like the women’s version. I’m uncomfortable with that as we would end up with all athletes having to go enhanced or have no chance of winning.
As I’m not interested in the games anyway I will watch with uncomfortable interest.
Itâs wrong but as we already permit young people to mutilate their bodies rendering themselves sterile and probably in need of lifetime medical support then why not offer the same poisoned chalice to equally impressionable athletes who at least entertain us.
The sport at present is little more than a joke anyway and thatâs before taking into account the influx of sub-standard dudes into ladies events and changing rooms.
Itâs still wrong though.
There could be two different sets of competitions – one for the drugged, the other for the undrugged.
It is all very sad.
Up until the 1960s the Tour de France had never been particularly concerned about drug taking. Neither had the riders with one using words to the effect âIf you expect us to put our bodies through this then you also have to expect us to be taking the odd pick-me-up.â
That was until the 1967 tour. In that year British cyclist, Tom Simpson died – almost certainly as a consequence of drugs. Since then, theyâve been a lot keener on testing. Why? Because sportsmen dying is bad for business. People do not want to see it. Formula 1 had a similar problem – with deaths if not drugs – and it has got a lot safer over the years. And a lot more popular.
I suspect this guy is going to run – if youâll excuse the pun – into similar problems. Unless he is very careful someone is going to die.
I suppose if I am going to mention the Tour de France I am also going to have to mention Lance Armstrong. The problem in the 1990s was EPO and for years there wasnât a test for it. So cyclists were given a choice: take it or get another job. And there was lots of money rolling in so the commentators and governing bodies turned a blind eye. I would like to think theyâve learned their lesson but I am not sure. The last 4 winners of the race have all been under the age of 23. This is highly unusual.
I believe only one cyclist died as a result of taking EPO but there were some high-profile cancers.
My favourite sporting drug story was the little red-haired Irish girl who showed improved at the advanced age (for a swimmer) of 27 to win 3 gold medals at the 1996 Olympics. Her records still stand as she never actually failed a drugs test although she did receive a 4 year ban for (allegedly) producing a 100 degree proof urine sample. Her coach and husband, an international discus thrower, also served a 4 year ban for using illegal drugs.
Two Greek sprinters who avoided post race tests at the Olympics by fleeing the stadium on a motorbike deserve honourable mentions.
Athletes already ruin their bodies in the name of their sport. I don’t know anyone who played rugby at even semi professional level on a regular basis who isn’t a bag of injuries by the time they are 40. The same goes for fighters, powerlifters etc. The truth is the hyper competitive will always sacrifice long term health to win.
It’s their bodies – if they want to compete in those fields, including enhanced – allow them. And by them risking their health on the bleeding edge of body tech, society as a whole will do doubt gain from refinements of those products.
Perhaps ‘enhanced athletes’ could be encouraged to keep a private diary of what drugs they take, and allow access to this diary when they die.
In this way, we might gain useful knowledge about what drugs are safe, and at what dosage.
Speaking for myself, I am quite satisfied with the benefits of just gorging on proteins+fats (and mostly abstaining from carbs+veggies) for 24h after resistance training.
I note that there is no drug testing in the World’s Strongest Man.
I wonder, how much would standards decline with drug testing?
As a baseball fan, I remember the excitement of the 1998 McGuire-Sosa Home Run race, but I also remember thinking it wasn’t really the same as watching the pre-juiced era records. Yeah, there was a generation of roid monsters hitting balls into the stands but then I had to think about the talking heads bloviating about how records were being broken and ask myself “were they really?” Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron did what they did and those records took for decades until better nutrition and better training methods and better chemistry came along and just don’t think it’s quite the same thing.
But now you have someone like Aaron Judge breaking Roger Maris’ record last year and then people analyzing the balls and finding a difference between the standard balls used and the ones pitched to Judge and there was a difference. MLB had its thumb on the scale because home runs are exciting and excitement gets butts in seats and that is the ultimate goal. Baseball has always been two-faced about the PED thing in that on the one hand they know it’s illegal and don’t want kids doing them and all of that, but they also turn a blind eye when they can because excitement is good for business. It’s the same thing with pushing to the point that high school pitchers are getting Tommy John surgery just in case they are good enough to get into the minors or knowing the Dominican baseball academies are nothing more than training camps with no academics at all but MLB doesn’t care about their welfare just if they can make the next superstar.
All other considerations aside, if PEDs are available to everyone, fine, but if it is only something a handful of superstars are tacitly allowed or a bunch take under the table while honest players don’t, then PEDs should remain banned by the sport if not the law.
At least when Barry Bonds broke Aaron’s record, the ball was sold to Marc Ecko’s and he gave it to the Hall of Fame, but not before he had it branded with an asterisk.
I’m with Patrick Crozier. If this ever becomes a thing of significance, it will have a short lifespan. Once a few weightlifters explode and runners keel over and die, people will stop watching.
We’ve always recognized a difference between professional and amateur athletes. Wouldn’t be too hard to simply add another distinction category. “Juiced” versus “natural.” Add in the “male hormones at the beginning” category also, and we’ll have too many athletic categories to support interest. But everyone will have a place in which to compete with similar people.
Question then is, will we also have to have categories such as “short basketball players” and “the weak and small rugby league” so that everyone will have a place in which to feel comfortable and capable.
Ha! Many people watch NASCAR for the crashes. Explode a few weightlifters, and your market grows.
Professional bodybuilding is completely full of PED use yet so many of the pros go through the pretense of not being juiced even though it’s obvious they are (check out the sizes compared to those who go in the drug tested competitions which are nowhere as popular nor have remotely comparable prize money). Legal complications are apparently one reason for the pretense, the other is that so many pros have sponsorship deals with sports nutrition companies. The latter want the general public to think their protein powders and creatine and vitamin tablets will get you as jacked as the pros, not the steroids, growth hormone and insulin they may be taking. I say this as someone who is a big fan of weight training.
Y’know… I used to take the libertarian approach to drug policy, for the recreational ones. If you’d have asked me, I’d have said the same about performance-enhancing ones, as well.
However, comma… I am capable of learning, and what I’ve learned is that the idiotic way we went about implementing de facto legalization of recreational pharmaceuticals here in parts of the US has been less than ideal. Disastrous, even. There are a lot of people who simply cannot handle their sh*t, so I’m now “ambivalent, leaning towards prohibition” for recreational drug use. Same mentality with the performance-enhancers.
The one thing you need to take into account with these things is the abuses that will inevitably be perpetrated by loser states like China or Russia. If you were to legalize performance enhancing drugs for sports, then those states are going to pump their athletes full of them, and damn the consequences. They do it anyway, but it’s harder for them to hide it, so there’s rather less of it than we’d get if it were legal.
There are articles and studies out there that go over the fates of the various East German women athletes who were in their “program”, back in the day. It’s ugly, monumentally ugly. Hearing them describe their lives before, during, and after the time they spent in “the system” is horrifying. And, all for boasting rights for some half-ass state that could barely feed itself.
We should not be encouraging these things. At. All. If it were up to me, I’d ban the Olympics and other international competitions just on that count alone. Morally, it would be correct to reduce the net amount of human suffering and misery that these “athletes” are put through.
Then, there’s all the amateur athletes and bodybuilder types who’re encouraged to use these things because their heroes use them, and they want the same results. Again, to reduce the net amount of human suffering would be the moral thing to do.
If most humans were mature and able to make good, informed decisions in these regards? We’d be OK with legalization of everything. As we don’t live in that ideal world? Yeah; let’s not assume we do.
I remember reading years ago of a racehorse getting disqualified after a race as its owner (or a family member) fed it a Mars bar (a chocolate/ caramel/ glucose candy bar for our friends beyond the seas), and the caffeine in it meant that the horse (no relation) failed the dope test. The poor horse was at least wholly blameless, but I can understand the concern that the test cannot be ‘pure’ if this happens. AFAIK, professional athletes have to watch everything that they eat in case they ingest a prohibited ‘supplement’, which seems to be a lot of hassle and risks unjust outcomes.
As one who has always found sports ‘governing bodies’ inherently ‘pompous’ and ridiculous, and extrapolating from that, the preposterously-named ‘World Anti-Doping Agency’ those attributes on steroids, despite their excellent biochemical skills, I can only say that I welcome any development that pricks their bubbles. However, there would still be the problem of the bogus ‘clean’ athletes masquerading as ‘pure’ alongside the true undoped.
One facet of banning substances does involve children. Kids want to be like their role models. PEDs are really bad and if adults want to juice, fine. If it’s legal and above board, and puts butts in seats, then everyone is happy. But when that adult is an idol to a million kids, then what?
Second, star players are huge investments for teams and owners. If some weightlifter blows a gasket because he’s juicing, who cares? If your star player you’re contracted to pay 50 million a year for the next seven years no matter what blows a gasket because he’s juicing, that’s a different story.
Finally, there may be a liability issue involved. If an owner demands a player juice or the player can make the case that he had no choice but to juice or be fired, and it can be proven that the PED caused a player to blow a gasket or develop cancer or break a bone or whatever, the team and owner might be on the hook. But if they’re illegal, the owner can always say “we tested, I don’t know how the player got around it, but he did and it isn’t my fault he juiced, so we aren’t responsible.”
The Lance Armstrong point above reminds me of Frankie Andreu’s claims that when he was riding on Armstrong’s teams that he had to dope or be dropped and Andreu opted to not race. I And when his wife tried to expose the truth about Armstrong’s doping, Armstrong tried to destroy her reputation. I don’t know where I’m going with it, but even above and beyond all the legality of doping, I’m sure there are still going to be athletes who will deny using PEDs and go after those who try to expose the truth.
No, it would not be safer. Far from it.
Cycling would have dozens of deaths a year. EPO thickens the blood, and when popular there were plenty of cases of young Belgians dying in their sleep. Low heart rates and thick blood is not a good mix.
There are already lots of young Americans playing football, young South Africans playing rugby, etc who destroy their bodies taking too much to bulk up (steroids or creatine generally). A boy at my school died after taking too much of the wrong stimulant and then exercising too heavily.
Not many top sports people would die in competitions. But many would die in their vain attempt to reach that level, and many more would do horrendous things to their bodies.
And at the end, the actual competition is no better as a result. Sure the underlying numbers are, but not the actual event.
@ bobby b. – regarding NASCAR and crashes – while it’s true that many NASCAR fans enjoy a good crash (đ) the fact is that, even with the crashes, NASCAR is far-more safe for the drivers than just-about any other motor sport, and even the most-spectacular crashes in NASCAR seldom result in serious injury or death. All the result of some serious science and engineering, which if you think about it, is pretty amazing. Most people don’t even grok that NASCAR cars easily reach the same top speeds as F1 cars, and run at average speeds far-higher than any F1 race. Remember, children, energy is as the square of speed.
So death and injury are rare by-products of the sport, which in any case, is primarily a test of machine, not man. By contrast, if PEDs become acceptable in some future form of ‘sport’ where physical strength and stamina are being tested, there will rapidly develop an ‘arms race’ of drugs and drug-taking which will eventually lead to many deaths and much suffering. We already see this in some sports like (American) football, with lifetimes of chronic injury and reduced life expectancy now the accepted price for just four or five years of ‘play’ at the highest levels. And that’s without ‘juicing’, at least in theory. Legitimize ‘juicing’, and athletes who are quite happy to ruin the rest of their lives for a chance at success today, will not hesitate. Look at a Lia Thomas, quite happy to take life-altering hormones that will fundamentally alter the rest of his life, just for the chance at transitory success in college-level women’s swimming. Due you seriously suppose that there aren’t many, many athletes ready and willing to do far, far worse to themselves?
llater,
llamas
@llamas – the anti-intrusion structural cage gave us all implicit permission to cheer the crashes again without feeling like ghouls! Nobody dies, but we get the rock-em sock-em fun anyway!
Win-Win!
Amen to the part about the recreational “fun” drugs. I’d still allow sane adults to take the hormones, though.
In my mind, the difference lies in how the “fun” drugs, with every dose, leave you less able mentally to make good continuing choices – the “fun” is partially driven by the drug effects that intentionally cripple your brain – while the steroid types don’t have that same affect.
You can be a sane, functioning adult while dosing on steroids for muscle bulk, and your decision to continue doing so is made in a functioning mind. After the first few doses of the “fun” drugs, though, you are less and less able to make rational life choices.
@bobby b,
Having dealt with some idiots who took enough anabolic steroids to demonstrate the classic “‘roid rage” syndrome, I’m not certain that the “performance enhancers” are any better when it comes to people demonstrating common sense in usage.
I’m also of a mind that a lot of the “therapeutic psychoactives” ought to be banned outright, and more work should be done on alternative treatments. Make me king for a day? One of the things I’d do would be to outright ban the outpatient use of psychoactives in all forms. You want to administer them? Fine; do so in a closely-monitored clinical setting, away from other people who have to deal with the crazy while you’re trying to find a therapeutic dose of whatever. Stories I could tell… Sweet babblin’ baby Jesus, but is the military casual as all hell dealing with handing that crap out for things like PTSD. And, what’s even better? The leadership and families have no rights under HIPAA to even know what the hell is going on. We had one of our guys who we knew was having “issues”, but we had a.) no idea he’d sought treatment, b.) no idea he was under treatment, or c.) no clue that they were basically handing him mass quantities of things like Halidol and telling him “Hey, try it at 5 mg every three hours, and then let us know what you think…”
News flash from the real world: YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS SUBJECTING OTHER PEOPLE TO YOUR FREE-FORM DRUG EXPERIMENTS. Not only that, but to rely on self-reporting by the patient, who wasn’t even aware of what he was doing on that stuff? Dear God almighty… And, I’ve seen that same idiocy take place in the civilian world. They dosed up a family friend’s daughter with an anti-seizure medication that they KNOW produces severe mood swings and outrageous behavioral issues with anger management, but they a.) did not warn anyone, and b.) refused to prescribe the much safer alternative because it was a tad bit more expensive. They nearly lost their daughter due to that idiocy, and if someone hadn’t mentioned the grief they went through when their wife was on the same medication…?
Yeah.
It’s like that malaria medication, Mefloquine. That stuff is known to produce some really outrageous issues, to include suicidal ideation and violence. It was probably a key component of the issues that the Canadian Airborne had in Somalia, and I know for a fact that it produced a bunch of really bizarre things in our guys who were taking it in Iraq. Might have even contributed to a couple of near-miss incidents where guys lost their bubble during “events”, and were only restrained from shooting when they shouldn’t have been shooting due to leadership that caught what was going on before it went seriously south.
Anything that messes with brain function ought to be carefully administered in a clinical setting, and a clinical setting that’s residential and not putting the patient into contact with anyone else besides medical personnel. Period. And, the damn doctors need to do their own subjective evaluations of the effects, not relying on the patient to tell them that the drug is “helping”. I guarantee you that that patient’s loved ones, supervisors, and co-workers have one hell of a different perspective on “working” than the patient has… You watch one of your formerly rock-steady subordinates go from narcoleptic to manic over the course of a few weeks, without knowing what’s going on? Yeah; you are going to have issues with them. We put one guy out of the Army, thinking he’d turned into a discipline problem, and only found out about his PTSD diagnosis and what amounted to free-form medical experimentation right before we booted his ass out the door for what we thought was misconduct. He’d never told the doctors what he was going through in the unit; the unit had no idea he was under treatment, or what they were giving him. Whole thing was utterly FUBAR.
I’ve never understood this messianic worship of people who run, jump, ride a pushbike, hit a ball in various ways…or those who play a musical instrument, sing or act.
This is the “drug” driving all this.
Polite appreciation certainly, and, of course, good for these people if they can make a decent living from it. But beyond that?
I have heard it said that things like football, the olympics etc are substitutes for war, useful channels to diffuse rivalries that may otherwise lead to battlefields. I think there is something in this, and the costs in human misery are of course vastly less than actual war.
But does there have to be any cost at all?
2024 will be the hundredth anniversary of Ernst Friedrich’s “war against war”. An interesting tome. For those who are not aware, it was a compliation of before and after photos: On the left, the pround young man in his new uniform on his way to glory; on the right, the result. Either the rotting corpse or the patched up wounds.
If you haven’t seen it, some of the maimed portrayed are genuinely shocking even in this selfish and cynical age.
I wonder what the reaction would be for a similar tome today?
On the left, the keen young athlete, so ready to devote and compete. On the right, the gravestone or picture of the drugged addled wreck.
Mr Ed
The horse in question was called No Bombs and he was disqualified after winning a race at Ascot over 40 years ago.
However you are incorrect in claiming he was wholly blameless (you horses always stick together) as he in fact snatched the chocolate confectionery from a careless stable lad during the journey to the racecourse. At least thatâs what the lad said.
Steven R
The is evidence that the Frankie Andreu situation was not exactly as you described. He in fact confessed to having taken EPO while riding for Armstrongs US Postal Team and only resigned/refused to continue when compelled by his wife. To muddy the waters further another cyclist George Hincapie testified that Andreu had taught him how to use the drug and which pharmacy it could be obtained from which, if true, suggests that the team were actively âkeeping their hands cleanâ in public. Four more US Postal riders, Levi Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis and Christian Vande Velda (who far from being ostracised has been NBCâs cycling analyst for the past decade FFS) have all confessed to doping along with Armstrong, Andreu and Hincapie.
No-one should seriously believe that US Postal was the only dirty team. Lance Armstrong* was the poster boy for the sport and, rather like Barry Bonds, became a convenient target for the self-righteous indignation and vengeance of people and indeed entire sports who knew damned well what was going on all the time.
* largely because of his inspirational fight against cancer. However as Jimmy Saville proved it is possible for very bad people to still do considerable good.
@ Kirk – I’m not so sure about the direct causal connection between the excessive use of anabolic steroids and the onset of so-called ‘roid rage’. There may be a chicken-and-egg situation at play. In my own experience, I well-recall the wise old sergeant who commented, in the 1990s, regarding several officers who appeared to have bulked-up and become more aggressive, ‘but you have to remember, they were always hair-triggered a-holes. The steroids just made them more-able to carry out their fantasies’. He likened it to several cases of male CO’s who had been cashiered for inapropriate interactions with female prisoners – they didn’t suddenly turn into serial abusers, they merely took advantage of the opportunities suddenly available to them to gratify their existing compulsions. It’s Willie Sutton in different dress.
Regarding the psychoactive side-effects of medications (like Mefloquine), you’re absolutely right that these are often overlooked or even actively ignored. That’s a result of the commercial pressures that drive the development of new drugs and treatments.
I remember the tale of No Bombs when it happened. And everyone with half a brain recognized the story for what it was. The tale of the snaffled Mars bar created a minor meme at the time, with anyone who did something unexpectedly well at risk of being jibed about having recently eaten a Mars bar, along with a pint of Heineken – “reaches the parts other beers cannot reach”. Happy days . . . . .
llater,
llamas
Obviously I think that people can make whatever arrangements they want. Another proposal — why not have an Olympics where cheating is allowed? Just as PED’s might help advance the human cause, surely cheating will inspire innovative thinking? “Fraser Orr sets new world record for the Marathon — 26 miles in fifteen minutes. (Sponsored by Uber)”.
I think there is a difference between what we allow and what we approve of as a society. Sports are encouraged because it supposedly benefits kids in a number of ways — competition, striving for goals, commitment, leadership and so forth — all positive attributes. And this is in part why we as a society encourage sports. But if you poison that well then it should probably move from something we encourage to something we tolerate.
Of course we already have closed our eyes to a burgeoning cheating scandal in sports where boys pretend to be girls. If there is anything that is going to discourage girls from going into sports it is the prospect of getting undressed in front of some guy bouncing around with his junk hanging out, or robbing them of any realistic chance of excelling because someone with a massive biological advantage is going to take all the medals. So, irrespective of PEDs women’s sports are already well on the way to being destroyed in the west anyway.
But, as others have pointed out, especially in professional sports, athletes are already taking a massive toll on their bodies, whether it is boxers who are almost Bidenesque in their inarticulation and confounders, or NFL players who can barely hobble up the stairs. Sports, especially the worship of sports teams is a bit too “Bread and Circuses” for me. I think participating in sports is a really good thing, I think watching sports is a bit of a mockery of what sports is meant to mean. And I also think the jingoistic tribalism is a bit disturbing.
Oh, here is an alternative headline for the “cheating Olympics”.
“David Smith is to be congratulated on his amazing marathon world record of 26 miles in 3 minutes and 45 seconds. ‘The family is SO proud of him” says his identical twin, John Smith, who, unfortunately, arrived at the finish line four hours too late to see his brother cross the line…”
My quibble is that if there were ‘Enhanced’ and ‘Natural’ competitions there would still be a great temptation for the ‘Enhanced’ athletes to cheat with stealth doping in competitions where everyone else was ‘natural’.
If PEDs are allowed, why not bionics?
Given the advances in bionics which are being made (they already have mechanical hands which can be operated by the muscles of the arm) it would not surprise me at all to see technology which could allow a one-armed person to become the greatest pitcher in MLB history. Imagine the spin rates a mechanical arm could achieve.
I will admit that bionic games could be pretty exciting, but I am not sure it would be the same sport anymore.
My quibble is that if there were âEnhancedâ and âNaturalâ competitions there would still be a great temptation for the âEnhancedâ athletes to cheat with stealth doping in competitions where everyone else was ânaturalâ.
You only have to read stories about one Paralympic competitor claiming another had overstated his or her disability in order to qualify for a more winnable event to realise something similar is already happening, albeit not with doping. Competition can bring out the worst as well as the best in people.
On the subject of the Paralympicâs how about adding a category for men suffering from what would until recently have been categorised as a psychological disorder, in the face of incontrovertible biological evidence to the contrary, namely the belief that they are women? I say this in jest in case anyone thinks I am belittling what is a hugely commendable and inspiring organisation. Long may it remain that way. For true sportsmanship Iâd choose Mandeville over Wenlock every time.