So, the sporting world is all a-tizzy over Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, who supposedly has elevated levels of testosterone in his blood. This follows countless stories of atheletes using an artificial chemical advantage to enhance their performance. Every Olympics the crackdown on blood-doping, steroids, and so on becomes more intense, and yet every Olympics sees more and more half-horse atheletes. Barry Bonds closes in on Hank Aaron and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the sportswriter community.
Who. Gives. A. Rat's. Ass.
The fact is, Landis made it from point A to point B faster than everyone else. Barry Bonds has hit more home runs than all but one major league baseball player. Ben Johnson got from point A to point B on foot faster than anyone before him.
The Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius": faster, higher, stronger. It says nothing about "cleaner" or "more virtuous" or "prettier" (that last one really bugs me, by the way, and is the reason that I believe the judged sports - figure skating, diving, gymnastics, and so on - should be dropped from the Olympics. The Olympics should only be events that can be objectively measured). And every time that the drug testers get better technology to detect foreign substances, the atheletes find better ways to fool the drug tests, necessitating better testing technology, and so on, in a never-ending cycle.My question is: why bother? Why not have a juiced-up athelete taking home the gold medal, if he runs faster than everyone else? How humiliating it must have been to Carl Lewis, to finish the 1988 100m race watching Ben Johnson's back the whole way, only to be handed the gold medal himself a few days later. Lewis knows he didn't win. Johnson knows Lewis didn't win. Half the world was watching, and could see with their own eyes that Johnson demolished everyone.
I can hear people sputtering right about now: "But... but... that's cheating! And steroids are dangerous, and Lyle Alzado... and... and..."
Oh, come on, be serious. The only reason that Landis is facing pressure now over the Tour de France is that some people believe that he got caught. It isn't the doing drugs that is objected to, it is the getting caught.
Have a look at the mustachioed Florence Griffith-Joyner circa 1988. Does anyone seriously believe that she wasn't on steroids? Or that the gaudy outfits and fingernails were not there to distract from the changes to her body due to the effects of those steroids?And yet her world record stands - not because she didn't use performance-enhancing drugs, but because she didn't get caught. And neither does the vast majority of atheletes in the Tour de France, the Olympics, the NFL, CFL, MLB, NHL, and probably FIFA.
The anti-doping crowd isn't fooling anyone into thinking that they are making any headway in the world of sport - all they are doing is forcing atheletes to find better ways of covering up. It is long past time to admit that the drug war is lost, on every front. It is long past time to "protect" people from their own decisions. If people want to juice up and die at age 38 like Joyner or at age 43 like Lyle Alzado, by all means let them. The only ones they are killing are themselves, and before they die they amuse us.
Technorati Tags: Athletics, Sport, Steroids, Floyd Landis, Barry Bonds, Ben Johnson, Florence Griffith-Joyner
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