h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, the most recent winner of the Tour De France has tested positive for a banned substance, blaming contaminated food. He now faces the possibility of being stripped of his title.

With the ever-increasing availability of drugs, which are becoming harder and harder to detect, has the time not come to just allow athletes to take whatever drugs they want to? Not only would this free up the millions spent on drugs testing at the Olympics, Commonwealth games, football and rugby tournaments etc, but would allow bodies like the ICC the opportunity to regulate these drugs and get an income from them.

It would also make fantastic viewing for the general public, with records being broken at every meet. Just imagine Usain Bolt doing the hundred yard dash in 6 seconds.

Isn't it about time to level the playing field?

No.

People will become charicatures because it will be the only way to be competitive.

Sports would become grotesque freak shows, people would have no normal lives after their sports and only those willing to undergo extreme treatments would win. Those with the highest pain threshold and least principles would win, not the fastest, most skilled, most talented.

Cycling's been ridden with doping since the beginning when they all got vey vey . Such a shame contador's been caught.

A certain balance is maintained between cheating Vs competing fairly while cheating is investigated and not allowed. If you take it away, women will be on testosterone treatments from before puberty, full blood transfusions will become normal, where will it stop? Full on genetic engineering? Athletes will become experiments. It's not a route I would ever want to see sport go down. Just look at a body building comeptition and find out a bit about it to see what happens when you derestrict things.

I should clarify my comment,

It's such a shame that contador's been accused of being involved with this sort of thing. But not a surprise.

Apology unnecessary, but thank you.

Taking steroids and other drugs is a personal choice, if people want to make that choice then perhaps they should be up-front and admit that they use performance enhancing substances instead of the usual pathetic attempts to blame it on prescription drugs, or some nefarious means of injecting it without the person knowing. Body building, as far as I am aware, isn't a "sport" as such, and the fact that certain exponents use enhancing drugs certainly isn't a surprise. The fact that people like Andre Agassi admitting to drug use- albeit it for recreational rather than performance enhancing reasons- still manages to cause ripples.

As you say, cycling has been riddled with accusations of drug use for many years, possibly more so than athletics. I fully agree with what you have said.

I just think that the efforts made by committee's such as the ICC are undermined by the drug manufacturers always seeming to be one step ahead of those intent on testing and outing potential drug cheats. If drug use was tolerated, or at least allowed or taken into consideration, it might in some way begin to clean up sports.

would stopping fighting viral attacks on computers stop people writing them? I doubt it. It would end up with a massive mess and millions of computers breaking down. I think athletes and sportspeople would be the same.

Doping in various forms, from injecting extra blood into athletes that they have previously had removed and stored, to taking performance enhancing drugs, painkilling treatments that allow an athlete to damage their bodies etc. just makes the playing field a scientific one, not a sports one. It's already pretty technical but a bad swimmer is a bad swimmer, a good swimmer is a good one.

What you're suggesting, while I can see where you're coming from, would most likely result in people being bred for specific sports and there's nothing to stop the shadiest operators from genetically engineering people for certani sports and jobs.

In most western countries you may not find it goes that far but in countries where succeeding at sport can be a route out of poverty etc. for those who have little access to education, freedoms etc that we take for granted, we already know the pressures that are put on people to allow themselves to be drugged. Allowing it openly wouldn't make it go away, I think there's a huge ethical that would be opened wide. It certainly wouldn't stop drug use.

As for body building, it's more of a sub-culture but at the end of the day, they work out, take steroids, starve their bodies to achieve minimal body fat (iirc, on a show day they try to get down to below 5% body fat. That's dangerous!) for the sake of winning a medal. Their bodies are unnatural, not actually very strong and do only the job they train for... Imagine runners with huge legs, short bodies, over-developed muscles and tendons in the legs. They'll look like human kangaroos!

The thought of opening the floodgates scares me! And it does take the sport away from true sportspeople who want to genuinely compete with bodies, not science.

Granted there will always be a dangerous minority that seek to use technology for their own means- be it computer hackers or athletes- but could there be an argument for taking away the illegality of drug use in sports?

As you rightly say, there must be some natural talent in the first place, if the individual decides that the easiest way to acheive 'perfection' is to inject the scrotum of a monkey into their veins then that should remain a personal choice. How often do you hear a footballer telling a reporter they've been given pain-killing injections so they can play in a crucial match? Is there really a big difference between this and someone's coach 'advising' them to take a certain substance as it 'might improve their performance'?

I just think if athletes were given the opportunity to compete and not have to hide the fact that they have used a steroid then the whole thing would be more open. Instead of having a wind-assisted time they could be give a 'steriod-assisted' time- a form of handicapping a la horse-racing. I'm not saying that it would be any more acceptable from a spectators point of view.

I do understand that sports in general are seen as a way out of poverty, and agree with you entirely, but most of these people have a natural ability for their given sport. The main culprits of drug cheating seem to be those in a far more priveleged position. Perhaps there could be two-tiered competitions- those running clean, and those taking performance enhancing substances.

p.s I would pay good money to see some human kangaroos! I bet they'd make fantastic window cleaners once their sports career is over.

'Sport', in whatever sense ; olympic comittees, all the associations etc, can't be seen to be encouraging use of drugs, like testerone which ultimately shortens the life of the person who's taking it for 'performance enhancing' reasons, Long term uses particularly of the testosterone kind can cause some pretty seirous problems as the taker gets older

From the perspective of the competitive sportsperson themselves, there is no advantage to legalising the use of 'performance enhancing' drugs; its only advantage and benifit is given to the athlete by virtue of the fact that the majority* don't take it; The 1% or whatever it is who do use it, thereby gain a competitive advantage over t the 90%+ who don't use them...

That's it 2legs.

MOnkey - I think the problem is that it would escalate massively.

Imagine that a particulary performance enhancing drug becomes commonplace (amphetamines for instance). What comes next for one of those to get the edge over the others? And at what price for the athlete? And what about the athlete who wants to run clean but is automatically not in with a chance because everyone's destroying their bodies and running a few seconds faster as standard?

Not to mention certain countries from running programmes of enhancing their sportspeople's abilities from a young age and forcing (effectively) children to become so specialised that their bodies break down as soon as they stop competing/dont make the grade any more?

I will mention here Gymnastics, and track and field specifically because I believe these are areas where such scandals have been uncovered in the past, mainly in the area of the Olympics and such.

Do you really think it's normal and OK for someone to undergo a complete blood transfusion for the sake of a few seconds off your time climbing a mountain on a pushbike? I cant see that ethically as much as anything else, we could allow that to become the norm for sporting success.

My particular interest is in equestrian sports and I certainly wouldn't want doping to become the norm there. Horses cannot speak for themselves and if you use drugs to enhance or suppress different things in a horse's body, you'll likely damage it beyond repair.

I just cant see it working. It's not like drug use in society where someone who indulges in drugs is automatically criminalised no matter how victimless the crime is. Allowing drug use in sports can cause major damage to thousands of lives if allowed. It really worries me, and would spoil what, to me, is the point of sports.

You are both, of course, completely right. I was just playing devil's advocate, really.

I still think it would be a sight to see if the four hundred metres relay teams all smoked a joint before the race, make em all paraniod about taking the baton, or trying to eat it cos they thought it was a giant sausage!

Drugs are bad, 'kay.

split it down the middle

enhanced athletes, no restriction on performance enhancing drugs

and

clean athletes, no drugs what so ever

would make testing easier, pee in the cup, it turned blue, dissqualified and banned for life from clean athletics.

If only the testing was that simple and if only you could trust people to just compete in the area they are supposed to be in!

I thought you might have been, Monkey

I'm not entirely sure why, except for it's illegality in most countries, smoking cannabis is a bannable offense. It's hardly performance enhancing unless you're entering a pie eating contest in about ten hours' time...

I suppose cannabis could be a useful 'aid' to sports such as rifle shooting, if it calms the nerves and puts you at ease. But then you might forget to pull the trigger

I'd imagine it'd do more to impaire somethign like shooting, it (canabis) can have quite profound affect on one's vision, and visual accuity.... Or so I've heard... Alo it can affect concentration, and, oh, what a nice pair of shoes.

Quite.

Marks!

Set!

Oh sod it lets have a giggle and eat cake and talk sh*t

Shame they dont have a section at the Olympics.

If you ask me- those sychronised swimmers all look like they've taken something illegal

yes... but quite why synchronised drowning.... sorry, swimming is considered a sport...

Likewise- walking!! How can putting one foot in front of the other really quickly so you are almost running but not quite running be considered a sport???

Archery? It's just pulling something back that's a bit difficult and then letting it go when the pointy thing is in the right direction.

They might as well make pancake racing olympic sports. It's actually quite difficult to run when you're wearing a pinny. I'd be good at that. I'm often told I'm a bit of a tosse.... oh wait..

I like archery. Unfortunately I'm unwilling to remove a breast in order to be able to shoot straight

i've not got a bad pull on a longbow. Cant remember what it was but my mate got one and he's a big, powerful bloke. I could draw it, just. Mind you, I'd never have hit anything, too shaky

<>

Is it true that women used to do that? Mind you, in the spirit of equality, it's really the least they could do.
Or could you keep your breast and just shoot round corners??

If you stand in the correct position and draw back to your right cheek with your right hand, the bowstring comes across the left hand side of the chest very closely. If you look at archers at the olympics or the commonwealth games, they wear a shield on one side of their chest to allow the string to run across the breast (which is somewhat flattened down as well) without hurting it or changing the path of the string too much. Ideally the bow should run parallel to the body with your arm held out to form a fairly straight line from hand, through elbow and shoulder, through the body to the other shoulder and out to the elbow that draws back. The slight angle is formed where the string is drawn back to the right cheek from the bow held in the left hand.

When I've done archery, I have to stand hollow. Instead of being able to effectively stand sideways and point with my left hand, I have to stand facing more directly to the front and my bow holding hand has to point forward more which means that the draw is shorter because the distance between left hand and right cheek is smaller.

I dont know how accurate the mythologies of breast-burning women are, but certainly some women have been said to have cauterised and/or removed the left breast to allow a fuller draw and a cleaner shot.