Malcolm Gladwell has read Epstein's book - wonders why dopers are condemned for trying to overcome genetic disadvantages

At USA's in 2008, I watched Christian Cantwell toe foul a 75'10 throw. He even argued the call and it could have gone his way. They measured it after the competition in case the ruling was overturned. To say that no one has come within a half a meter is lie to those that have watched the throw closely.

I was a huge Wade Boggs fan back in the day, and I remember vividly that he had to have eye surgery because his vision had deteriorated to 20/20 (from 20/12, I believe). I understand Gladwell's point - how is that not cheating while even just getting a low hct up to normal levels is?

As far as your Tommy John point - I'm not aware of any bonafide studies on elite runners that any PEDs actually provide a benefit. Also, there's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/sports/baseball/20surgery.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

. I didn't realize there were healthy pitchers going for Tommy John surgery!

This is where we start getting into semantics. If you're naturally at a 48hct and overtraining gets you down to 40hct, then you would be okay with the peds to get you back to your natural 48 quickly?

Don't get me wrong - I abhor cheaters and think they're borderline sociopaths, but I get Gladwell's point.

Sellout wrote:

It's not about how fast you run compared to someone else, it's about reaching your own limits, whatever they are. Failure to achieve builds character. Athletes who don't acknowledge their natural limits are cowardly denying the essence of our sport that provides us with so much fulfillment.

This^

And also, doping doesn't really level the playing field. As stated by others, individuals react differently to drugs. This favors those who react to drugs the best. Even if everyone had an equal reaction to drugs, the playing field would still not be even. In this case, those who already were advantaged would get better by the same amount as those who were at a disadvantage. Both would perform better, but those at a disadvantage would not be any closer to the performance level of those who are advantaged. In this case, if everyone doped, doping would only serve to raise the level of sports and records. It would not make anyone better relative to others. In reality, since people react differently to drugs, doping further scrambles advantages and disadvantages in sports. Sports are meant to showcase natural ability, not how much you can increase your performance using drugs.

For those who say there is already PED use - which is true - that doesn't mean that we would be at the same point with unrestricted PED use. It's like saying that there is pervasive speeding on the highways, therefore it would make no difference if we eliminated speed limits.

Even if PED restrictions are not perfect, they at least limit the amount of doping and give clean athletes some chance of competing. Unrestricted doping would result in a complete freak show where people would destroy themselves to get short term success. Plenty of runners would ignore the risk of, for example, death from turning their blood to sludge, just to have one successful season. PED restrictions at least keep the sport from those extremes.

And, as always, this argument ignores the differences between men and women. Doping by women to masculinize themselves is the most effective kind of doping but causes permanent harm to women and effectively destroys the idea of women's sports. You would end up with men's sports and quasi-men's sports.

I think that if it is not how fast you run compared to someone else but reaching your own limits, then it would be OK to do drugs if you feel it is OK.

You only risk hurting yourself.

But when competing against others it effects more than just you and has repercussions to those who look at these results and try to attain them.

Good post. When i put up the gladwell link late last night, I was too tired to post my thoughts and am glad someone did a good job.

Randomly today is Gladwell's 50th birthday. Happy Bday.

Having just turned 40, i think the body goes at 35.

I read it. Not impressed.

Cheating is cheating no matter how much you try to defend it or explain it or justify it.

They all knew they were cheating (this is why they kept it secret and lied).

This idea that it is okay because it levels the playing field or allows you to become an even better you - is just nonsense.

It is never 100% nature nor 100% nurture.

You do the best with what you have. That is sport. That is humanity.

Exactly which part of this do you think is "semantics" ?

kanny wrote:

This is where we start getting into semantics. If you're naturally at a 48hct and overtraining gets you down to 40hct, then you would be okay with the peds to get you back to your natural 48 quickly?

Don't get me wrong - I abhor cheaters and think they're borderline sociopaths, but I get Gladwell's point.

I was going to start playing devil's advocate regarding congenital/childhood/adolescent/adult-onset growth hormone deficiency and treatment, but found that there are TUE guidelines (USADA) for that already.

On a side note, I still can't believe platelet rich plasma therapy is legal. IMHO, that's cheating.

Read the post that I responded to.

I think a lot of Gladwell, too. But I agree, he misses on this one.

I wish he had really explored how doping in sport "grew up", because I think that's really important in this discussion. It would add some organizing principals to what makes something illegal vs. legal, and help A-Rod figure out, "why baseball has drawn a bright moral line between the performance-enhancing products of modern endocrinology and those offered by orthopedics."

Here's what I mean: In all of the rule-abiding examples he gives (i.e. natural freakishness, Tommy John surgery, taking iodine supplements) none seem to have unintended consequences. No one in those examples was selling their soul for athletic greatness at expense of horribly destroying their long term health. But, with doping (especially in the early days, and still today without doctor supervision) that's exactly what you are doing. Most doping (that actually helps) can be dangerous...unintended consequences are rampant.

That's really the mark of doping vs. not doping, isn't it? It's not some, random, arbitrary, "bright moral line" (which is where Gladwell is hinting)...rather doping controls were traditionally a line established for the athletes SAFETY.

Correcting one's ulnar collateral ligament, or eating iodized salt, or just taking the body you were given doesn't make you chose whether or not you need to compromise your overall health to compete. But, making your blood thick and soupy with EPO, or turning you from female to male with steroids does. And, even if you do so under careful supervision of a doctor, limiting those risks, the fact that you are doing it makes it more necessary for others to do it to compete with you. They may not have the money needed to do it safely.

If someone invented a cheap, ubiquitous PED, that had no adverse side effects and couldn't really be abused to the detriment of long-term health, then maybe PED use could be grouped with Gladwell's other examples. But, until that happens, doping controls primarily exist so that the sport doesn't turn into, "Who has the most money to spend on PEDs and doctor supervision?" or "Who is willing to risk their long term health for greatness?" - that's not what we want to test for with athletic competitions. We want to test for the person who optimizes a multi-variable function that includes talent, training, and competition day performance.

Gladwell has written a piece where he reflects on having read David Epstein's new Sports Gene book. Gladwell's piece is a very provocative read:http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/09/09/130909crat_atlarge_gladwell?currentPage=allYou really need to read the whole thing but several times in the piece, Gladwell wonders why is doping viewed differently than say surgery:

He also questions why Lance Armstrong is viewed negatively. Afterall, he didn't have a naturally high red blood cell count so he had to try to over-come that by doping.

Update: We' ve just realized there is a pod-cast where he argues for legalizing PEDs

Well stated. When we talk about "fair play" in sports, we just mean that everyone operates within the rules of the sport. We don't mean that every competitor has an equal chance of winning.

Nobody wants to see an Olympic 5000m final where 12 athletes, all exactly evenly-matched, line up to do battle. We want to see the most gifted (mentally, but especially physically) athlete win. Sure, it's not "fair" that one person may be born with far superior genetics to another, but that has nothing to do with sport. If two football teams play each other, and one has a field goal kicker who is consistently accurate from 50 yards out, and the opposing kicker is only accurate from 30 yards out, we don't really consider the game "unfair".

Similarly, if the goal of doping were really to equalize things, wouldn't it be simpler and less expensive to figure out who the really gifted athletes were based on physiological test, and handicap them? That way there would be no need to waste money on potentially dangerous drugs. If you win a 1500m gold medal, from then on, you have to compete in weighted shoes, or something like that.

I'm trying to picture what "fair racing" from Gladwell's perspective would ideally look like. Maybe a road race with hundreds of evenly-matched competitors who had prepared for the race by receiving everything from no doping at all to huge quantities of drugs, based on their natural attributes or lack thereof, all staying together in a pack because nobody could drop their equally able opponents, ending in a blanket sprint finish. Positioning would be everything. It would be unwatchable.

Gamera wrote:I'm trying to picture what "fair racing" from Gladwell's perspective would ideally look like. Maybe a road race with hundreds of evenly-matched competitors who had prepared for the race by receiving everything from no doping at all to huge quantities of drugs, based on their natural attributes or lack thereof, all staying together in a pack because nobody could drop their equally able opponents, ending in a blanket sprint finish. Positioning would be everything. It would be unwatchable.

Handicapping makes some sense in something like golf where it lets players of different abilities play together in a social game while still making it competitive.

But pro golfers don't compete at tournaments with handicaps - at a top competitive level you don't try to equalize talent because the whole point is for the most talented to be able to display that talent and be able to win. It's a competition, not just a social outing. Otherwise you might as well just play roulette or roll dice.

The problem is that Gladwell has an amazing talent for finding bullshit that sounds reasonable.

His legalize PEDs argument is just as full of sh^t as his 10,000 hours of practice argument.

PEDs don\'t affect all athletes equally. For example, an athlete w/ a naturally high hematocrit will not receive the same boost from EPO as an athlete with a naturally low hematocrit. All legalizing doping does is tip the advantage towards those who are genetically more inclined to benefit from whatever doping products are currently in use.

If PEDs were legalized, does anyone think the "genetically inferior" would achieve parity with their betters? Wouldn't the "genetically superior" just extend their advantage by themselves using PEDs? The whole point of the regulatory apparatus is to avoid a race to the bottom wherein athletes destroy their future health as the price for competing at a high level in sports.

Gladwell is a smart guy I guess because he can sell books, but his position was refuted many decades ago. Why on earth he has not researched the literature on this is beyond me. Each of the following four points brought up in this thread by itself refutes his view: (1) females in sports (good luck with females on unlimited testosterone and HGH!), (2) the repair damage/ enhancement of healthy distinction, (3) unnatural/ natural distinction and (4) the different responses to drugs is still genetic distinction.

This has been gone over ad nauseum for many decades. Just look at the cycling debates back in the '80s and '90s (really, going back many decades earlier).

grox wrote: the countries shoveling the most money into sports are the ones that do well.

Your Mom wrote: Do you believe Ethiopia, for instance, has money to spend on sport?

Well there you go; there are two elites, economic and genetic.