Sit down for a moment and imagine that you are an Olympic athlete. For the past decade, you’ve trained hard, sticking to a brutal physical regiment. On the eve of the 2002 Olympics, someone comes knocking at your door?it’s the World Anti Doping Agency?and they want your blood.
This scene has emerged as a common one among athletes hoping to capture those ever elusive Olympic medals. During the Sydney Olympics physicians tested more than 1,500 athletes for illegal substances. Next month, physicians will perform 5,000 tests, half of which will occur outside of competition. The IOC strictly forbids doping (defined as “the use of an artifice, whether substance or method, potentially dangerous to athletes’ health and/or capable of enhancing their performance”) and hired WADA to perform the tests.
Though it appears to be a strategically sound idea, the “surprise” factor involved in 2,500 of next month’s tests will not make the crater-sized impact that Olympic officials are hoping for.
Despite WADA’s efforts, both the past and future of anti-doping look complicated?and, ironically, it’s innovations in science and technology (not to mention human greed) that are responsible.
Since the inception of the Games, doping has been a means by which athletes can maximize their performances. In the third century BC, athletes reported using mushrooms and plant extracts.
Since then, things have become more complicated.
In a 1972 survey, 68 percent of Olympic athletes reported using steroids to enhance their performances. Because there were no regulations in place, the practice of doping exploded into a lucrative Olympic “warm up” activity.
Doping gained momentum during the 1976 Montreal Games, where the East Germany team swept the women’s swimming competition?nabbing 11 of the 13 medals in the sport. Coaches and opposing competitors raised their eyebrows in both fascination and disgust?the German women had dominated the contest, but their masculine appearance was more than enough evidence to suggest that they hadn’t achieved glory on their own.
Years later, scientists discovered that the East Germans had been doping their athletes under the guise of “vitamins.” The women themselves were not aware of the drug damage until, decades later, they were barraged with health problems.
The motivations that continue to fuel doping in the athletic world emanate from self-interest and national pride. In 1980, U.S. president Jimmy Carter told the Olympic ice hockey team, “You represent all the ideals of our society.” Just a little bit of pressure, don’t you think?
Under that stress, teams will do whatever it takes to win?even if it includes administering body-altering substances to their athletes.
Aside from the inequalities created by the practice of doping, not all teams are created equal.
Even if there were a 100 percent trustworthy test to detect each and every performance-enhancing substance, a seemingly equal field of play would be filled with potholes created by constantly evolving scientific and technological innovations.
Take, for example, the Los Angeles Olympics. Granted, they were not drug-free. But let’s look at another aspect?the equipment. Roadbike developers in the United States created for the U.S. team “moon bikes,” innovative and expensive two wheeled wonders that made gold medalists out of inferior athletes.
If drugs make the Olympics a competition among laboratories, then equipment makes the Games a competition among manufacturing’s brightest minds. The only difference is that technological tinkering is, albeit unfair, legal.
Imagine a racetrack: In one lane is the below average guy with plenty of money, in the other lane sits a small villages’ most distinguished athlete. One is driving a souped-up car. The other is cracking a whip trying to start the engine?a wizened donkey attached to a broken cart. Who would you put your money on?
Ultimately, business laboratories will win the medals, and the athletes will just be the conduits?the lifeless channel?through which rich nations prove their technological prowess.
Case in point: EPO, a major banned supplement in the Olympics. Though it’s difficult to detect, athletes who test positive in 2002 for the drug will get the boot?no Olympics, no medals, no ticker tape parade. But, just like the makings of a bad infomercial?for just $12,000, you can have your very own hypoxic chamber, which duplicates the aerobic advantage that EPO provides, without the risk of those pesky anti-doping officials detecting your advantage. You win!
Just as infomercials get worse as a night of television watching progresses, ways to slip under the anti-doping radar are becoming more and more extreme.
In a conference last month, scientists predicted that by the 2004 Games, dozens, if not hundreds, of athletes are expected to have experimented with gene doping?using artificial copies of human genes to improve performance. Another frightening implication is that gene doping can be arranged to make detection impossible.
If this destructive trend in biological manipulation continues, by the morning of the next Olympics, humans may eerily fulfill the Games’ motto, citius, altius, fortius?faster, higher and stronger.
Laura welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to the editor to: [email protected].