Bob McCown spent a session of his radio show on The Fan 590 today talking with Jack McCallum about McCallum's article on drug use in sports for Sports Illustrated.
McCown seemed awfully frustrated with what he sees as a growing give-up attitude in the war against performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sports. While it might not be accurate to say that McCallum shares the "Can't Beat'em" attitude, he did set off McCown. In this case, McCown's right.
HGH, Human Growth Hormone, and it's slightly chemically-altered cousins, is the current drug of choice when it comes to cheating detection. Right now, there is no effective test for it ... in urine. As soon as they develop one, and millions of dollars are being spent on that very goal, something else will take its place atop the heap of helpful cheats.
In reality, the flaw is the continued desire by governing bodies to skirt the line of respecting athlete's privacy. No, they won't mandate blood testing. Yes, they will mandate random tests wherein the tested athlete disrobes in front of an inspector and pees into a bottle. Hardly dignified. You can't have it both ways. Either you want a drug-free sports world, or you don't. Dignity and body be damned.
The ONLY way to catch drug cheats is blood testing. Simple as that. I don't know the whole efficacy of blood testing, but I know it's a zillion times more inclusive that is urine. Drugs CHANGE blood chemistry for a period of time, before being absorbed into their basic building blocks. And variants cause those same changes. That means you can't make a living by offering athletes steroids that are one or two atoms off from the original ... and thus not detectable for the very specific tests being used today. It if acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it's probably from the same drug family.
If I became sports czar for a sport like track and field, the drug-testing would be all year round. Base profiles would be taken of athletes to establish what is normal for their body. The same blood would be run through a battery of tests to see if the athlete was ALREADY getting enhanced. Then, periodically, the athlete would get called to give up a few CCs of blood (I'm not expert enough to know how much). When it comes to a major event, Olympics or World Championships, the athletes would queue up to donate blood at least 48 hours BEFORE they participated. Gotta give them time to recover from the blood-letting.
All medal-winners, the first runner-up and one other random participant, would all get to donate blood apres-event. The reason you do the fourth-place finisher is that you have to be sure you aren't replacing one cheat with another, if you catch one of the medalists and have to give him, her or them the boot.
If you've ever been in a drug-testing centre at a sporting event, you will be surprised to discover just how involved the process is for taking urine tests. The athlete is often completely exhausted, frequently verging on the edge of dehydration. They have given it their all. Juice, water, tea, even beer. It's all there in an attempt to generate some liquid waste. The donation itself is relatively private, if you count having an observer watching your privates as you donate, 'private.'
Wouldn't it be better to have a trained medical professional there to take a blood sample and let you get back to celebrating. It would take five minutes tops. One athlete I know, once took 2.5 hours to fill his cup.
Blood tests won't STOP PEDs and their insidious influence on sports, and their increasing destructive influence on young kids who want to use sports to better their lot in life. They'll put a big crimp on the current state of the art cheating. That said, before taking a leak on the idea, consider who'd win, if we did start using better testing methods to catch the cheats.
Yep, you and me. The people who play fair. Who play by the rules.
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