杏吧原创

No drugs, no sports teams

鈥淚f we were informed that we could not select an athlete taking steroids, we simply wouldn鈥檛 have a team.鈥� This recent comment by Dr Pat O鈥橲hea, an exercise physiologist and member of the US Olympic Weightlifting Committee, summarises the considerable increase in the use of anabolic steroids by athletes in recent years. Athletes now either take them, or desist and feel frustrated about possible unfair competition with those who do.

Many other drugs are now used, openly or secretively, in the dressing room and on the sports field. A recent report states that a spot check of the Delaware State University football team showed that about a fifth of the players had been taking drugs. The pressures of modern professional sport make it likely that such medication will increase further.

As the games in Munich draw closer, is the Olympic ideal of unfettered competition between natural skills realistic any more? Total fairness is an illusory goal which would restrict events to competitors with similar genomes, environmental background, coaches and opportunities. That being so, why ban drugs any more than special diet or training methods?

Governments and doctors have a responsibility to discourage people from consuming dangerous substances. But beyond that, need there be any restrictions on the use of drugs taken to promote athletic skill? As things are, we face the ludicrous spectacle of scientists devising ever more sensitive monitoring tests to detect drugs while others play molecular roulette to devise new drugs that escape detection.

From New 杏吧原创, 24 August 1972