Look I'm sure there are hundreds of sports blogs (and mainstream media) out there ripping every athlete from Clemens to Bonds to A-rod (and let me state that I'm not a big fan of any of those guys), but let me shoot a warning shot across sport's proverbial bow; keep talking about performance-enhancing substances and you will ruin sport forever.
Here is my rationale and I know it is fairly radical, but I approach this as a guy who has worked with athletes, leagues, and events for 25 years. I've seen first hand the effects of bad drug testing procedures, uneducated media personalities (sadly there are few journalists left) and organizations more concerned about their public image than protecting an athlete's livelihood. I've seen the politics of anti-doping organizations, the zealots and the passionate, and wondered if it is fair that an athlete in her teens be stripped of a medal because she took an over-the-counter flu medication?
If you are an athlete reading this I hope that you will share this with other athletes, unfortunately, the only way anything will change is if the athletes take back their sports from the lawyers.
Here is my pitch...This isn't about performance-enhancing substances; it is about the health of the athletes. PERIOD!
Now I'll give that a second to sink in and understand what I am proposing. This isn't about whether a 40+ year old can still hit like he did when he was in his twenties and in so doing break long standing records. Get over it. Records fall, but that's not fair because if Mickey Mantle had...blah, blah, blah. Yeah I know, and if Booby Orr could have had the surgery available today he would have broke every record too. The fact is athletes, training techniques, surgery, sport nutrition and supplements have all gotten better and 50 years from now let's hope they continue to improve so that we can all lead more active lives.
Why do we need to shift the focus away from Performance Enhancing Substances (PES) and completely re-tool the issue to be about the health of an athlete? Two reasons; first the semantics of the argument, "Performance Enhancing" begins to define any athlete that is improving his performance as a "cheater". Second, the line between what is illegal performance enhancing and what is acceptable performance enhancing creates a "grey" zone that worsens the impact of the first issue over time. Want proof, examine WADA's recent comments on "oxygen tents" and traning at altitude; if the goal is to stop performance enhancing then the organization is forever at odds with sports science, technology and the internal drive of the athlete's own psyche.
What is the job of every elite athlete? To improve their performance every day. They do that through training, nutrition, better coaching, rehabilitation, surgery, drugs (yes, legal & illegal drugs) and sleep. If your goal is to stop the "artifical" improvement of an athlete's body by saying that an athlete cannot take a product that is synthetic or causes growth or recovery that is significant, then you start wiping out hundreds of products (just look at the recent IOC banned list by WADA). Athletes who train for the Olympics live in fear that some product that is available to the masses contains even the smallest trace amount of a banned product menas that they can't take basic medication for allergies and colds. Is that helping the health of the athletes? NO!
The randomness with which we categorically define the "cheat" drugs as injectable verse ingestable is puzzling. Many of the Sport-heads would like you to believe that this is about "Steroids"...really? So I guess we should prohibit our NFL and MLB athletes from using Cortizone. It is a steroid and helps the body recover, in fact when it first came out it was a wonder drug, but some sports have determined that it is acceptable. Why? Because administered safely it helps the athlete. Does it improve performance? Hell, yeah. But after proper analysis and prescription it is safe.
The problem with the discussion in sports today is that we think we have to stop athletes from improving their performance by "artificial" means. We have multiple standards though when defining those means. Is it performance enhancing to have Tommy John Elbow surgery? Sure it is, that's why there is a rise of kids having elective TJ operations. Is anyone raising a stink when several members of the Yankees endorse a well-known Lazik eye surgeon for improving their vision? No. Isn't that performance enhancing? I promise you that it will be made illegal by MLB the minute one high profile athlete has their eyes damaged during the procedure.
The fact is the media is focused on trying to keep this about guys taking drug "X" (HGH, etc), when the issue of performance enhancing substances, surgical procedures or even future genetic grafting make this argument ridiculous. I am a big fan of Kurt Shilling and when I saw what he wrote about cheaters I had to laugh, here is a guy who had an experimental surgery on his ankle so that he could pitch a few days later. Was that surgery performance enhancing? Without it could he have pitched? But it wasn't a banned substance...what if he could have taken a substance throughout the year to help his ankle recover so that he never would have needed that surgery, would that have been cheating? We define surgery as necessary, but a drug as cheating.
Now take all of these "what if's" and put them through another prism...the health of the athlete, and suddenly, like good Lazik surgery, things get clearer. A football player suffers what is considered the equivalent of a car crash every week, if taking a recuperative agent that helps their joints, skeleton and muscles recover for next weekends battle why shouldn't they be allowed to? They aren't just average guys running a few miles on the weekends who get up feeling sore. They should have access to the latest in sports science. Athletes have always been the testing labs for future drugs, let them do it in plain site of the medical and sport community.
I find it absurd that media-heads who rail athletes about cheating by taking some foreign substance have no idea what it feels like to get up with that pain...every week, season after season. Please, walk a few miles in their cleats before you open your mouth.
If I said I have a substance in a little vial that if you take it in the correct dosages will improve your performance by up to 6%, should that substance be legal or illegal? Hopefully you are smart enough about sports nutrition to know that you can't answer that question. Water taken in the right dosage can effect performance by that much, should water be illegal. Of course because it will not negatively effect the health of the athlete. Now take too much EPO and your blood turns to molasses and you die. Okay, EPO bad. But if you need it to fight cancer and regain your strength, its okay. The difference is that a DR is involved in that second scenario. My suggestion is that we need more testing, more visibility into the health of the athlete, but not so that we can ban and athlete for a positive test, but to keep them healthy and performing at their best.
I am proposing a completely new structure that would keep athletes healthy by letting them have access to the latest innovations and rehabilitation and performance substances, but all under doctor supervision. Let me also say that it will require throwing a major turd on the desk of the IOC and WADA, but more on that later.
In my next blog I'm going to explain what steps Pro Athletes should take to end this cycle and turn their sports around.]
Here is my rationale and I know it is fairly radical, but I approach this as a guy who has worked with athletes, leagues, and events for 25 years. I've seen first hand the effects of bad drug testing procedures, uneducated media personalities (sadly there are few journalists left) and organizations more concerned about their public image than protecting an athlete's livelihood. I've seen the politics of anti-doping organizations, the zealots and the passionate, and wondered if it is fair that an athlete in her teens be stripped of a medal because she took an over-the-counter flu medication?
If you are an athlete reading this I hope that you will share this with other athletes, unfortunately, the only way anything will change is if the athletes take back their sports from the lawyers.
Here is my pitch...This isn't about performance-enhancing substances; it is about the health of the athletes. PERIOD!
Now I'll give that a second to sink in and understand what I am proposing. This isn't about whether a 40+ year old can still hit like he did when he was in his twenties and in so doing break long standing records. Get over it. Records fall, but that's not fair because if Mickey Mantle had...blah, blah, blah. Yeah I know, and if Booby Orr could have had the surgery available today he would have broke every record too. The fact is athletes, training techniques, surgery, sport nutrition and supplements have all gotten better and 50 years from now let's hope they continue to improve so that we can all lead more active lives.
Why do we need to shift the focus away from Performance Enhancing Substances (PES) and completely re-tool the issue to be about the health of an athlete? Two reasons; first the semantics of the argument, "Performance Enhancing" begins to define any athlete that is improving his performance as a "cheater". Second, the line between what is illegal performance enhancing and what is acceptable performance enhancing creates a "grey" zone that worsens the impact of the first issue over time. Want proof, examine WADA's recent comments on "oxygen tents" and traning at altitude; if the goal is to stop performance enhancing then the organization is forever at odds with sports science, technology and the internal drive of the athlete's own psyche.
What is the job of every elite athlete? To improve their performance every day. They do that through training, nutrition, better coaching, rehabilitation, surgery, drugs (yes, legal & illegal drugs) and sleep. If your goal is to stop the "artifical" improvement of an athlete's body by saying that an athlete cannot take a product that is synthetic or causes growth or recovery that is significant, then you start wiping out hundreds of products (just look at the recent IOC banned list by WADA). Athletes who train for the Olympics live in fear that some product that is available to the masses contains even the smallest trace amount of a banned product menas that they can't take basic medication for allergies and colds. Is that helping the health of the athletes? NO!
The randomness with which we categorically define the "cheat" drugs as injectable verse ingestable is puzzling. Many of the Sport-heads would like you to believe that this is about "Steroids"...really? So I guess we should prohibit our NFL and MLB athletes from using Cortizone. It is a steroid and helps the body recover, in fact when it first came out it was a wonder drug, but some sports have determined that it is acceptable. Why? Because administered safely it helps the athlete. Does it improve performance? Hell, yeah. But after proper analysis and prescription it is safe.
The problem with the discussion in sports today is that we think we have to stop athletes from improving their performance by "artificial" means. We have multiple standards though when defining those means. Is it performance enhancing to have Tommy John Elbow surgery? Sure it is, that's why there is a rise of kids having elective TJ operations. Is anyone raising a stink when several members of the Yankees endorse a well-known Lazik eye surgeon for improving their vision? No. Isn't that performance enhancing? I promise you that it will be made illegal by MLB the minute one high profile athlete has their eyes damaged during the procedure.
The fact is the media is focused on trying to keep this about guys taking drug "X" (HGH, etc), when the issue of performance enhancing substances, surgical procedures or even future genetic grafting make this argument ridiculous. I am a big fan of Kurt Shilling and when I saw what he wrote about cheaters I had to laugh, here is a guy who had an experimental surgery on his ankle so that he could pitch a few days later. Was that surgery performance enhancing? Without it could he have pitched? But it wasn't a banned substance...what if he could have taken a substance throughout the year to help his ankle recover so that he never would have needed that surgery, would that have been cheating? We define surgery as necessary, but a drug as cheating.
Now take all of these "what if's" and put them through another prism...the health of the athlete, and suddenly, like good Lazik surgery, things get clearer. A football player suffers what is considered the equivalent of a car crash every week, if taking a recuperative agent that helps their joints, skeleton and muscles recover for next weekends battle why shouldn't they be allowed to? They aren't just average guys running a few miles on the weekends who get up feeling sore. They should have access to the latest in sports science. Athletes have always been the testing labs for future drugs, let them do it in plain site of the medical and sport community.
I find it absurd that media-heads who rail athletes about cheating by taking some foreign substance have no idea what it feels like to get up with that pain...every week, season after season. Please, walk a few miles in their cleats before you open your mouth.
If I said I have a substance in a little vial that if you take it in the correct dosages will improve your performance by up to 6%, should that substance be legal or illegal? Hopefully you are smart enough about sports nutrition to know that you can't answer that question. Water taken in the right dosage can effect performance by that much, should water be illegal. Of course because it will not negatively effect the health of the athlete. Now take too much EPO and your blood turns to molasses and you die. Okay, EPO bad. But if you need it to fight cancer and regain your strength, its okay. The difference is that a DR is involved in that second scenario. My suggestion is that we need more testing, more visibility into the health of the athlete, but not so that we can ban and athlete for a positive test, but to keep them healthy and performing at their best.
I am proposing a completely new structure that would keep athletes healthy by letting them have access to the latest innovations and rehabilitation and performance substances, but all under doctor supervision. Let me also say that it will require throwing a major turd on the desk of the IOC and WADA, but more on that later.
In my next blog I'm going to explain what steps Pro Athletes should take to end this cycle and turn their sports around.]
