Doug Logan (ex-CEO of USATF) publicly endorses PEDs

Gotta agree with Logan here.

I am sick of all of the talk after any stellar performance or championship race being "So-And-So is doping, but This-Guy-Here isn't, so This-Guy-Here is the winner in my eyes."

In track, the guy who crosses the line first is the winner. All matters of training, be it long runs, track intervals, massage, altitude tents, burpees, HGH, thyroid hormone, EPO, are just ways of getting to that point.

I'm not going to take HGH to drop my 1500m time below 4:00. I wouldn't expect some high school schlub to do it either.

One other thing. The day they go laissez-faire on PEDs will be the last day on the competitive track for Mary Cain and a whole legion of young runners.

It'd probably be a good thing if the moderators correct the title of this thread. It's clearly incorrect. So fix it.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Gotta agree with Logan here.

I am sick of all of the talk after any stellar performance or championship race being "So-And-So is doping, but This-Guy-Here isn't, so This-Guy-Here is the winner in my eyes."

In track, the guy who crosses the line first is the winner. All matters of training, be it long runs, track intervals, massage, altitude tents, burpees, HGH, thyroid hormone, EPO, are just ways of getting to that point.

I'm not going to take HGH to drop my 1500m time below 4:00. I wouldn't expect some high school schlub to do it either.

There will always be a spectrum of non-cheaters to cheaters. Currently the spectrum ranges from clean to moderate cheaters. If doping is legalized, the spectrum would just shift from moderate to extreme cheaters and significant adverse health consequences including death. It's like a city looking at speed limits and considering getting rid of them because a few break them anyways.

And yes, there will be a lot of high schoolers with highly driven parents getting their kids all sorts of PEDs. If PEDs became legal, you can count on every respectable public figure to discourage youth sport participation because of the pervasive drug use. Yeah, that would be great.

wejo wrote:

People want sports to be about who is the best athlete, not who has the best doctor. Maybe now the doctors are more involved than we'd like to admit, but generally people view sports as something that uplifts us.

Legally, Nevada books about $3 billion annually on sports betting. Yet the NGISC estimates illegal sports gambling at close to $400 billion a year.

As "uplifting" as it is for spectators, sports is a livelihood for those competing. If it's ok for all those betting to do so outside the legal scope, then how hypocritical is it to cast judgement on PED users.

What is more morally reprehensible: SF-H charging money as an sexual escort or SF-H taking PEDs to get the best contract and score the top endorsements?

The average Jimmy and Suzie have no idea how much Logan has seen behind the curtain. How much money is spent in the game of detection/avoidance/detection/avoidance and the science that is obviously revolutionizing sports. His experience has shaped his perception and that has shaped his reality.

How do we police bionic implants that increase VO2Max and break down lactic?

You can disagree with his stance, but he was the CEO of USATF and most certainly knows a bit more than 99% of us.

way too many unknowledgeable wrote:

Logan's implied message is worth hearing. Either we engage in a full court press to limit PED's, or we do virtually nothing at all. Any middle ground is far too susceptible to manipulation. Although there have been significant strides made in term of doping, given the geographic and enforcement variances, we are in a slippery middle ground now, which creates nothing but frustration.

The sport has already suffered. Most all of the women's world records are drug induced jokes. I am trying to remember when I last took world class performances seriously. My guess is sometime in the mid-70s'.

+1

I think Doug Logan is pretty much on the ball, and people calling him out of touch or stupid are simply in denial about the current state of professional athletics in general.

First things first. In any business that involves money, people will find ways to make more of it regardless of the legality. From wall street to track and field, manipulation and legal navigation of the rules will be used to advance one's fiscal standing, and in the case of sports entertainment, physically. The more exorbitant the amount of money, the more people will cut corners.

The point being, please stop expecting athletes to be Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire. The day and age of gentleman athletes died when owners of teams, heads of athletic unions, and league presidents starting capitalizing off the entertainment value the athletes provided.

At the professional level, it's sports entertainment, and to think of it as something other than a business is simply denying the fact that athletes are contract employees. They are expendable, depreciating assets in a system where time isn't on their side, injury is most likely a career ending issue, and the rest of their peers will use any means necessary to get ahead. Integrity doesn't improve athletic achievement, put more seats in the stands, or sell more tickets.

At some time in every pro athletes life, they recognize that there are ways of getting to the level they desire. When their talent is maxed, and they can't do anything else, there are still ways to improve, and if that's the difference between hitting 2 of 10 and being in single A or hitting 3 of 10 and being in the Majors with a 3 million dollar salary who wouldn't take it... and if you say you wouldn't, then you have a completely unrealistic understanding of the state of sports entertainment today.

It's bullshit. I know. And I completely wish that people could find a reasonable set of rules and ethics that every player abide by. A set bar... but to think that the current state of USADA and WADA or any other drug testing agency is capable of making a level playing field is laughable.

So while I hate to say that I've given up thinking there are clean athletes getting screwed, I mean it. And it isn't necessarily that I don't think there are clean athletes, because there are, I just don't care anymore. I can't watch a baseball game, football game, track meet, hockey game, basketball game (etc..) and constantly be angered that half of the players are cheating... the entertainment value of said game or meet becomes void.

Instead, I've chosen to accept that I'd rather see people even the playing field and continue to progress the sport, with PED's or not.

I don't care if Satchel Paige could have struck out Ryan Braun or if the 1985 Celtics could have competed with current heat. I don't care if Jim Ryun would have beat Hitchem Elgoruge (sp?)... it doesn't matter. All that matters is that when I watch athletes in their current era, that I believe they all have the same edge. That's what I think Doug Logan meant.

But [quote]Giddy wrote:

First things first. In any business that involves money, people will find ways to make more of it regardless of the legality. From wall street to track and field, manipulation and legal navigation of the rules will be used to advance one's fiscal standing, and in the case of sports entertainment, physically. The more exorbitant the amount of money, the more people will cut corners.

quote]

What I keep trying to point out is, a major problem with this rationalization for legalizing PEDs is that you can't really separate pro sports and amateur sports. You can't say, "ah, let the professionals take whatever they want, it's just entertainment, and they have the right to decide what goes in their bodies", because when you think of pro sports, you see that for the most part the pro leagues are filled not with superstars, but with athletes striving to stay on the team, and athletes a level below them striving to replace them, and college athletes hoping to be able to replace them, and high school athletes hoping to be big-time college athletes, and on down to little league. A lot of young people are consumed by the desire to "make it to the next level", and then the level beyond that, etc. I honestly think that there are loads of parents out there who would have no compunction about giving their young kids PEDs so that they could be better than the other local kids, or out of some sense that the other kids were probably going to do it anyway, so might as well keep the field even.

So as an illustration, in the PED-legal future, a "clean" baseball player isn't likely to make it to the major leagues if everybody else in MLB is juiced. He'll have to start doping in AA or AAA ball if he wants to stand out as a future major leaguer, except that everybody else in AA and AAA has already thought of that, and even those leagues will be filled with guys with articially enhanced abilities. So maybe he'll just have to accept that if he ever dreams of being a pro, he had better start doping in 9th grade, before he goes out for the HS team. Except the HS team is probably already full of enhanced players who have been doping since T-ball.....

I see legalizing PEDs as inevitably meaning that PED use would insiduously work its way into all levels of play, including youth leagues. So I feel that when someone says "Quit wasting time and money chasing the pro athletes around for their urine - just let them do what they want", they are unintentionally advocating throwing away any chance of a relatively innocent athletic childhood for kids of the future. And all the tough guy cynics can sneer all they want at that, but I think it would be a shame.

Giddy wrote:

All that matters is that when I watch athletes in their current era, that I believe they all have the same edge. That's what I think Doug Logan meant.

Very well put.

In 2011 USADA spent $8 million on testing and $1.1 million on science research and development. That is overwhelmingly lopsided and destined for failure. The very fact that Lance Armstrong avoided detection for as long as he did is proof that the "ahdas" are utterly pointless amid the matrix of PEDs and professional sports. And it is estimated that USADA spent over $16 million pursuing a multi-year investigation of LA, which eventuated into nothing more than a public confession that made bank from Oprah's show.

Logan is spot on and speaks "sense" to anyone cognizant of the 21st century and where we're headed.

USADA 2011 Report

This argument that because WADA and USADA can't catch everyone therefore they ought to give up is baloney. People rob stores every day and the laws don't prevent it. That's no reason to make it legal to rob stores. Either its worth preventing or it's not and it's either worth trying to have a clean sport or it's not.

With track, even if they don't catch everyone they do in fact catch many people and the fact that they are testing prevents the worst abuses. That's exactly why most of the women's WRs haven't changed in years - because anti-doping at least prevents the worst abuses, which is a sign that it is working

Especially in women's sports, if there were not testing sports would be full of freaks who ruined their health just like the former Eastern Bloc female athletes. That is worth preventing because it would harm the athletes and kill the sport.

Also, drug testing came in precisely because doping hurts the sport with the public. Doping cases have hurt support of track, baseball, the Tour de France, etc. There needs to be more and better testing, not less. If you throw in the towel on doping, you might as well throw in the towel on track and field while you're at it because unrestricted doping would kill the sport.

Well this is more of an acknowledgement of a human condition bent toward depravity--like parents who shove cigarettes in their mouths while they hold their newborns--than anything related to PEDs. It probably would, and because children are still developing, we'd likely see spikes in fatality rates. Again, all this would show is that thousands of years later and human beings are just as selfish and sinful as they always have been despite any new age modern "enlightenment" than people want to claim.

If you really want to do the research, you will find that the money spent on detecting/policing is a droplet compared to the bucket resources spent by the culpable side, both inventing and avoiding.

In fact, if you really look into the science, you will find that there are pharmaceutical companies already poised for an announcement that the war on PEDs has been made redundant. Because there's a whole bunch of money and science waiting to be realized in the free market.

And finally people fail to recognize and admit just how arbitrary PEDs in sport is. What is banned? What has been engineered but not yet banned? How do you deal with in utero development at altitude realized through an 18 year old East African phenom running 12:47 off dirt tracks, when you're own sea-level 18 year old phenom's 13:37 takes almost seven years and millions of dollars to get to 12:58.9? What is fair, and what is equitable?

Moot.

observationalist wrote:

You can disagree with his stance, but he was the CEO of USATF and most certainly knows a bit more than 99% of us.

I know this to not be true.

No fool like an old fool wrote:

This argument that because WADA and USADA can't catch everyone therefore they ought to give up is baloney. People rob stores every day and the laws don't prevent it. That's no reason to make it legal to rob stores. Either its worth preventing or it's not and it's either worth trying to have a clean sport or it's not.

I don't see what luncheon meat has to do with anything. Is baloney even edible, because I think that should be on the FDA's banned list.

Anyway, I assume you are trolling but I'll indulge here. I find any attempt to bring a societal law/violent crime comparison into PEDs, as foolish. Like a middle schooler's argument.

There is no purist sport anymore. Whatever your sport, it s corporate competition. Plain and simple. Fighting PEDs is Moot. Opening the PED flood gates will alter the landscape, but the waters will recede and we'll be left with it level.

PEDs are almost as necessary as shoes these days.

think making athletics into a PED free-for-all would be a death-knell for the sport - maybe most sports. If you dreamed of being an elite runner, even trying to succeed without taking PEDs would be pointless when you knew the competition had such a large advantage. There would no longer really be the issue of having to resist the temptation to cheat. It would just be standard procedure.

All NCAA athletes would be taking PEDs to try to achieve good performances that would get them noticed by potential sponsors. Even lesser college athletes would need to take PEDs just so they didn't get utterly demolished by the PED-using competition. High school athletes would be taking PEDs to try to get college scholarships, or even just to help them beat the cross-town rivals, who would also be using. It wouldn't be long before insane little-league parents all had their kids jacked up on a cocktail of drugs so they could make the traveling all-star team.

Maybe a couple of decades later, lots of people would start dropping dead from unusual cancers, or other illnesses caused by rampant PED use.

_________________________________________

you just fairly well described sports TODAY!!!

read Willy Voet's Breaking the Chain. Festina affair in the 90's. This stuff has been going on for YEARS.

When alcohol was banned, almost everyone wanted alcohol, Al Capone became famous and Elliot Ness was notorious.

Now recreational drugs like marijuana are banned, supposedly because they make people more intelligent, and dangerous drugs are "okay", as long as you have a prescription from a quack or get it from a pharmacy. The illegal drug trade is rampant, and promoted by the government. There are big bucks in common drugs, for no other reason than them being illegal.

The same is the case with peds. They make runners faster, the same way that alcohol makes people better drivers, i.e. they only think they are faster, they only think they are stronger, they only think they can drive effortlessly and never get in a wreck.

No fool like an old fool wrote:

Drug testing came in precisely because doping hurts the sport with the public.

No, drug testing came in because, in the era of shamateurism, the eastern block de facto professional athletes started doping progressively more aggressively while western athletes [outside of the strength events] didn't. The big turning point came at the 1976 Summer Olympics when the East German women destroyed the heavily hyped US team. That didn't particularly hurt the sport with the public, but it infuriated the powers that be at USOC, USA Swimming, AAU, etc. Basically, American sports authorities were ok with looking the other way while the eastern block doped until, oh no, they could beat our precious little Shirley Babashoff et al.

At that point, there started to be much more conversation about the evils of doping, but the US Olympic boycott in 1980 and the Soviet Olympic boycott in 1984 kept the issue of the front burner until we got to Seoul and the first essentially professional Olympics. In the meantime, boy did those US female swimmers get one heck of a lot faster. Hmmm...

It all led us to our current world of big talk about catching drug cheats but huge incentives to look the other way and a general public that doesn't care much about the issue.

I mean, come on, they were advertising Androgel during the Olympics. Kinda says something, no?

Stop treating athletes like children or even animals. Stop requiring them to be available, day or night, 24/7, to pee in a cup or give a sample of blood. Most importantly, let’s stop making a morality play out of the issue. We must stop assuming that athletic success is accompanied by doping and lying and cheating.

This part voices some of my thoughts on the issue. The last part is a bit idealistic, but at least for kids they shouldn't think that drugs make you faster. The first part drives home the point for me. Nobody dreams of having their every move watched and having to pee in a cup.

Sounds like someone who has been beat down in a battle he knows he will never win. He is wrong, but I feel where he is coming from. The problem is out of control. The money is in the cheating, until that changes nothing ever will.

He was right on with this though:

"If an athlete breaks the law, throw the book at him or her and fine them or throw them in jail."

I never understood why the law never goes after these people for illegal possession, fraud and everything else. Steal a few grand by fixing the numbers on you taxes and you lose everything. Make millions by defrauding your employer, nothing.