Zat0pek wrote:
Does anyone REALLY believe that is ONLY talent, training and courage?
Bottom line: If you REALLY want to be world class. . .then you have a choice to make.
Finally someone asks the right question. Put yourself in the elite athlete's shoes. Look at how the choice sneaks up on you. And man, what a choice.
Here's the deal: Performances have been ratcheting up for years, with a human genome that doesn't change, not in less than a few thousand years anyway, and training methods that haven't been materially different for 20-30 years now. So humans haven't somehow evolved in just a few decades, and neither has training to speak of. And you think those ratcheting performances across the board at the elite level are natural biology? Even with more Africans participating in the sport these days, it just doesn't stand to reason. The magnitude of the time drops of the last 10 years or so are just too great to be accounted for statistically by more participants.
Performances have been ratcheting up within a drug culture that started back in the 1950/60s for weight guys, probably the 60s for sprinters, and at least by sometime in the 70s for distance runners, who may have been a little late to the game. By the 1970s for weights/sprints and the late 70s/early 80s for distance runners, it's getting to the point where it's the rare bird who can compete internationally on talent/hard work alone. It's endemic. As someone said, this is nothing new anymore, only the drugs change and are new.
Then you get to the late 80s or early 90s when EPO is coming on the scene. There are few, maybe virtually no natural runners left able to compete at the very top anymore (probably at best mid-pack or back of top tier), not against that nuclear weapon, not against EPO, even those from East/North Africa with the best genetics. Maybe things not yet quite as bad as cycling where everyone agrees usage is 99% and the other 1% finish back of the pack, but starting to get close to that point.
Now against that you have the personal dilemma that creeps up on you as your career progresses. Early on, you're on a college team or at the Junior level if in some other country than the U.S. Depending on just how early some other people get on the 'roids or other kind of juice, you might be able to compete fine. Maybe, maybe not.
Regardless, your next career step is to progress past that level. You're knocking on the door of the big leagues. You begin to realize the drug use is endemic. You see no natural runners at the top, or you suspect there are none. You are getting hints that you need to make a choice if you want to make the top level.
And here is your choice: Take the drugs, and, combined with the talent you were born with and the same hard work you always put into it (just like the druggies are putting into it, in fact they are training HARDER than you EXACTLY BECAUSE of drugs), you might stand a chance. (People here always seem to think it is an either/or choice between drugs and hard work when it is BOTH/AND, in two ways. You work hard AND do drugs or else someone else doing drugs will work harder than you. Also you can do both steroids AND blood boosters, not either one or else the other.)
I would bet there are many, many who do decide not to dope, perhaps MANY more than decide TO dope, but we are talking here about the ones still in the sport after attrition (deciding not to dope) has weeded the others out.
Your other choice in the matter of course is to refuse the drugs and basically never be able to compete in the top tier. Maybe, if you get lucky, you still might make a World or Olympic final, but you'll then get smoked like a Cuban cigar and rubbed out in the ashtray of the other athletes' exhaust. And if it gets as bad as cycling, where the <1% naturals finish WAY in the back by all insider accounts, you wouldn't even get that far. And being that the "system" is an arms race between the testers and beating the tests, it's inevitable things progress from bad to worse just like in cycling unless there is no way to beat the tests.
But then here's your other choice that nobody talks about. Who are you going to ask about your choice or tell it to? You can't really talk to your competitors about it, so everyone keeps mostly quiet out of fear. There are all these little pockets and teams of people on the juice, but there doesn't have to be any widespread conspiracy. Because no one will talk about who's doing what publicly, or who they think might be doing what, out of fear. So rumor and whispers prevails instead, and it will likely always be that way short of French customs incidents and Dubin inquiries where people are FORCED to talk. You say they should simply speak out and name names? Libel, my friend, always remember libel and the lawyers who would sue you out of existence.
And you can't talk to your family unless they are in the sport and already in the know as well. Everyone else is such Pollyannas they simply wouldn't understand the choice. Give up the sport you love? Just up and walk away from the sport you've given half a lifetime to, invested your effort for years, your base of friends, your livelihood?
I would hate to be in that situation. From what I have heard/read, most athletes DON'T want to dope, but they feel they have no choice. These are people no different than you and me, really, other than their talent. Who can say what we would do if we were in their position?
Personally, I cannot judge those who are using. It is all too easy to empathize when you really stop and really think hard through what they would be faced with.