Poll: IAAF suspends Russia | Corruption in Sport | Is any sporting spectacle valid and engaging?

[sky pies]

You'll have to forgive if this is in any way disjointed I'm still a bit knocked off-kilter by what has happened in Paris in the last few hours.

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The IAAF has provisionally suspended Russia from competing in athletics, I'm not sure about this but this may have an impact on their attendance at next year's Olympics in Rio.

Speaking about the decision, IAAF president Sebastien Coe said: "We have been dealing with the failure of ARAF and made the decision to provisionally suspend them, the toughest sanction we can apply at this time.

"But we discussed and agreed that the whole system has failed the athletes, not just in Russia, but around the world.

"This has been a shameful wake-up call and we are clear that cheating at any level will not be tolerated.

"To this end, the IAAF, WADA, the member federations and athletes need to look closely at ourselves, our cultures and our processes to identify where failures exist and be tough in our determination to fix them and rebuild trust in our sport. There can be no more important focus for our sport."

I'm not going to try and be a news service for you all, but I am bringing up this incident as an opportunity to discuss corruption in global sports, and gauge to what extent you are still capable of being inspired by exceptional sporting performances.

Dope cheats are legion. Lance Armstrong and just about every other professional cyclist ever. Marion Jones, that grinning superwoman of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Justin Gatlin, multiple-time dope cheat who came within an ace of beating Usain Bolt at the World Championships this year, only to thankfully screw up at the final hurdle and save us from having to deal with an all-but-confirmed dope cheat being World Champion.

The cheating extends beyond athletics and cycling, but my point is this:

[HEADING=3]To what extent are you jaded?[/HEADING]
To what extent are you capable of being inspired or even marginally entertained by these performers?

Have a look at this video, and know that each of the Russian runners - even the third one who didn't come close - have been outed as being souped up to the eyeballs during that race. Don't be surprised if the rest of them aren't also humming like jeeps.

Consider that one of the other nations with similarly dubious biological passports to those of Russia is that time-honoured haven of long distance runners Kenya, whose chief athletic export at this time is the imperious David Rudisha. Have a look at Davey smashing the World Record at London 2012 and as yourself if this guy really is the greatest runner in the history of his sport or just the greatest doper?

Just for one example, one suggestion: Do you think it's in the NFL? We know it's in baseball, to what extent must doping be an integral part of the NFL setup to not be uncovered yet? Are all those snowy-haired resident geniuses slapping on rubber gloves and shoving roids up athlete's butts at half time?

 

[tippy2k2]

Of course it's in the NFL. Players are constantly being popped for PED and other various drugs. For a lot of players, there's waaaaaaay too much money on the line and such a small amount of people that for some of those fringe players, you need that edge. I'd be shocked if less than half of players use some kind of performance enhancing drugs.

Now maybe I'm going to be the odd man out here but I don't really care. It is their bodies and if they want to pump it full of steroids and take those risks for the money, who am I to tell them no? It (generally) creates a better game as it allows the athletes to become bigger, stronger, and faster. Now I don't think it's a very good idea for them to do it but if they choose to, I don't really care.

 

[CeeBod]

Now maybe I'm going to be the odd man out here but I don't really care. It is their bodies and if they want to pump it full of steroids and take those risks for the money, who am I to tell them no?

Damn I wanted to be the odd man out! p

The use of performance enhancing drugs in the modern Olympics is on record as early as the games of the third Olympiad (1904), when Thomas Hicks won the marathon after receiving an injection of strychnine in the middle of the race.

Drugs such as erythropoietin (EPO) and growth hormone are natural chemicals in the body. As technology advances, drugs have become harder to detect because they mimic natural processes. In a few years, there will likely be many undetectable drugs, and genetic enhancement may even start to become possible. The goal of "cleaning up" sport is completely unrealistic.

People do well at sport as a result of the genetic lottery that happened to deal them a winning hand. If you have one version of the ACE gene, you will be better at long distance events. If you have another, you will be better at short distance events. Sport is the province of the genetic freaks.

In 1964 the Finnish skier Eero Maentyranta won three gold medals. It was later found that he had a genetic mutation that meant that he ?naturally? had 40?50% more red blood cells than average. Those born at high altitude develop lungs that are more efficient than those born at low altitudes, and those whose families for many generations have lived at altitude have developed a whole whost of adaptions that make their bodies ideal for endurance, which is one of the key reasons for the dominance of the Ethiopians and Kenyans in long distance running.

Sport is already intrinsically "not fair" without the influence of any banned substances because we are not all equal genetically, so what's the big deal about drugs? Does a PED actually enhance performance? Yes it does, but mostly only in terms of power - which is useful at least at times in all sports, but is only really 100% useful in weight-lifting. I do get annoyed by this idea that taking a banned substance instantly turns an also-ran into a superman. Using a baseball example:

Barry Bonds was an awesome player, and would have been an awesome player without the use of any banned substances. One can argue that he wouldn't have hit quite so many Home Runs, and therefore may have fallen short of the all-time and season HR records that are now usually described as "tainted", but he didn't magically become good just by virtue of injecting something! A PED-free Barry Bonds would still have put up numbers that were at least as good if not better than Willie Mays.

Rather than try to ban everything, and fail spectacularly because it's obviously piss-easy to avoid detection for many years, wouldn't it be more sensible to allow but regulate drug use? - Focus on making it safer, and eliminating some of the more ridiculous doping methods. Eg: blood transfusions - when there are blood and plasma shortages that can make the difference between life and death for someone in an accident, how disgusting is it that blood is regularly being taken to use as a PED by healthy sportsmen? Personally I'd rather have a record book that didn't have to have records struck out or have asterisks alongside!

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, can't take sports seriously due to this and other issues.

OTOH, any sport small enough to not be worth this sort of thing is a different matter.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Yeah . What's the point of watching sports then. I mean if only super human freaks can play, and they become that way by performance drugs, it's basically a game of who got the better drugs, than who is the better player.

May as well replace all the people by robots.

 

[tippy2k2]

It is their bodies and if they want to pump it full of steroids and take those risks for the money, who am I to tell them no? It (generally) creates a better game as it allows the athletes to become bigger, stronger, and faster.

The general problem I have with it is that it means everyone else has to do the same. And bear in mind that most (I'd guess all) people enter the sports world as youngsters, and there's an incredible amount of pressure on them to perform at the top level at a point when they're young, naive, and in an unhealthy relationship with their coach (obviously not in all, possibly most, cases, but it's not uncommon, especially in one-on-one elite training).

That's a fair point but I guess I'm of the mind that we don't allow minors to smoke or drink either. It's not like we can't still keep drugs against the rules in high school/college sports. As you stated, there's the pressure to be the very best but that pressure is going to exist no matter what with just how competitive the field is with how much freaking money is in the game.

 

[RandV80]

It kind of depends on the type, as different sports require different things, but I tend to be a bit more optimistic. When it comes to playing in a professional team league, you often start with kids who were naturally gifted and dominated their competition growing up, get drafted (for North American sports) high and make a smooth transition into the pro leagues. At what point do they need to start taking PED's when they've already won the genetic lottery? There's also people that will drop the blanket statement 'oh they all must be doping', and I don't know it just gives me the impression that they're kind of assholes.

I'm a hockey fan, and I recall a pretty sensible article from an NHL player that said basically most guys are 'clean' but there's typically one guy in the room (20-23 players) that's dirty. The general profile is a guy who couldn't make the cut early on and was spending time in the minors with a big league career looking unlikely.

Although this brings up another key point, as to what exactly do you consider 'doping'. The way Dick Pound looks at sports you're average person having a cup of coffee in the morning would be considered taking a PED. In this case the NHL is much more suspect in what the players do before a game, and I don't mean just a big dose of caffeine (though in the 90's my brother worked at a cafe where couple local NHL players would drop in before a game for a triple/quad shot espresso). There's also the topic of injury recovery. A teams key player takes an injury that is diagnosed for a 2 month recovery time, and being highly competitive is back in 6 weeks. Was there some funny business going on there? Is it even considered PED if you're using something to recover from an injury? In these two cases the NHL is a little more suspect.

 

[spartan231490]

Other. I don't really follow sports, but it's not because I'm jaded, it's because with one or two exceptions they're boring to watch. This is particularly true of olympic events. They're just not compelling to watch, but that doesn't make exceptional athletes any less spectacular or inspiring.

 

[MoltenSilver]

I'm of two minds on it; on the one hand I almost wish they'd just drop it alltogether: "Yknow what? Everyone's gonna do everything to win so let's go whole hog, you can put whatever drugs you want in yourself and we'll make our contest about who can be the most ridiculously superhuman mutant possible." I mean natural genetic and environmental advantages already make it very unfair don't they?

But then tragic reality has to stamp all over that and point out that someone so abusing their body they die at 35 seems rather unfair to ask of someone who just wants to compete. Maybe we could have like two competitions? One stringently, intensely regulated to see who can be the best 'pure' human (Though that begs the question of whether people with genetic aberrations are allowed and, in turn, what counts as a genetic aberration and that's just a discussion that's never ended well in human history) and who can be the best super-human (though that's also moot as in a few years we'd have to have this discussion all over again in the form of what cybernetic implants count as fair and unfair, though I suppose there's at least some precedent in that given the Paralympics carefully considers what prosthetic might give someone an unfair advantage)

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

That's a fair point but I guess I'm of the mind that we don't allow minors to smoke or drink either. It's not like we can't still keep drugs against the rules in high school/college sports. As you stated, there's the pressure to be the very best but that pressure is going to exist no matter what with just how competitive the field is with how much freaking money is in the game.

Even if it was restricted from children, steroids and many other enhancements have negative short and long term effects on your body. And when sports become an arms-race of drug enhancements, ethics are going to be thrown out the window. If there's an incredibly risky drug that can give you a substantial boost in your performance, there's going to be huge amounts of pressure to use it. Whoever decides to adopt that risk will have an edge on everyone else, possibly to the point where there's little point in trying if you aren't taking it as well.

 

[sky pies]

Rather than try to ban everything, and fail spectacularly because it's obviously piss-easy to avoid detection for many years, wouldn't it be more sensible to allow but regulate drug use? - Focus on making it safer, and eliminating some of the more ridiculous doping methods. Eg: blood transfusions - when there are blood and plasma shortages that can make the difference between life and death for someone in an accident, how disgusting is it that blood is regularly being taken to use as a PED by healthy sportsmen? Personally I'd rather have a record book that didn't have to have records struck out or have asterisks alongside!

You certainly bring a lot of knowledge and/or research to the debate!

I think the big deal about drugs is similar to the problems with trying to enact global reforms to football. You can't say every football game needs a video referee or goal line technology because the little tykes just off Copacabana can't afford the tech, any more than the urchins kicking a pigskin in Addis Ababa. If you were to allow drugs, then you'd have to ask yourself two questions[footnote] 0:35 [/footnote], firstly you'd have to consider how you can ensure a level playing field in the grey areas of competition between the highest and second highest levels, the competitive levels and the 'social' levels, etc. Secondly you would have to ask if you really want to support people screwing with their bodies to the extent that doping implies.

I dunno. I mean what you're saying has the same kind of logic as legalizing Marijuana etc, and it's a good logic. As you say they should focus on making things safer etc. But I gotta be honest with you, I just don't enjoy the idea of institutionalized doping. I might equate it to asking if you want your sport to have legislated good or legislated evil.

I know that sounds ridiculous - like something George W Bush would use to whip up conservative support for war or something - but I just think I'd rather the sport stood for pure effort rather than legalized body-enhancement. I mean what kind of example is it showing to kids that when they grow up their natural talents will be wiped away by a fixx of chemicals? It feels like something from one of those nasty movies of the future like Starship Troopers, Total Recall, heck even THX-1138, in which people are kept under control with drugs.

I don't really want a world where these things are encouraged, but you know what they probably already are anyway. There are probably fat coaches in khaki shorts and dark blue polo shirts stalking around athletics fields in Florida and giving 6 foot four fifteen year olds pills that will burn out their heart by the age of 40.

 

[Albino Boo]

Rather than try to ban everything, and fail spectacularly because it's obviously piss-easy to avoid detection for many years, wouldn't it be more sensible to allow but regulate drug use? - Focus on making it safer, and eliminating some of the more ridiculous doping methods. Eg: blood transfusions - when there are blood and plasma shortages that can make the difference between life and death for someone in an accident, how disgusting is it that blood is regularly being taken to use as a PED by healthy sportsmen? Personally I'd rather have a record book that didn't have to have records struck out or have asterisks alongside!

That's the thing, it isn't piss easy to avoid detection. To avoid detection requires the active or passive collaboration of the relevant authorities. Russia has been thrown out because the Russian state decided that winning gold medals was more important than following the rules. The Russian testing lab simply covered up failed tests. The Russian athletic authorities bribed the head of the IAAF to cover up the failing tests. Lance Armstrong was able to get away using drugs because the UCI didn't want to know and looked the other way and there are allegations of bribery to cover up failed tests. The Balco scandal happened because the US athletics set up didn't want to look into results of their big winners. Even though Marion Jones has suspicious test results from when she was young as 16.