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Let Them Take Dope—and Make Them Tell

By Bill GiffordPosted Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET

Illustration by Robert Neubecker This week in Sydney, more than 400 top athletes will be pulled aside and given a much-ballyhooed urine test for erythropoetin, or EPO, a previously undetectable blood-enhancing compound favored by cyclists, swimmers, and other endurance athletes. As with most drug tests, this one won't catch all the users—just the stupid and unlucky ones. The problem? The urine test detects whether EPO was used within 72 hours, while the drug is generally used six to eight weeks before a big race. A handful of athletes will be expelled, and the dirtiest Olympics in history will go on.

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More and more, the war on drugs in sports is starting to resemble the one in society at large. Tiny victories are hailed while the general, crushing defeat goes on. White House commissions issue thunderous, instantly ignored reports. Rigid orthodoxies are enforced, while an obvious question is declared taboo: Why not legalize?

Even IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch has been tempted. "The list of [banned] products must be reduced drastically," he declared in a 1998 interview. "Anything that doesn't affect the health of the athlete, for me isn't doping."

He was quickly shouted down—but his idea was welcomed in the most dope-ridden sport of them all, professional cycling. At the time, cycling was mired in drug scandals stemming from the 1998 Tour de France, which saw several teams caught red-handed and kicked out of the race. It was an agonizing spectacle, and in its aftermath drug use declined—but only temporarily. This spring, the French sports daily L'Equipe mourned that cycling had returned to "the route" of doping. And murmurs about legalizing drugs continue within the sport.

Why do cyclists use drugs? It seems like dirty play to civilians, but performance-enhancement is part of the culture of the sport, legal or otherwise. A top professional might race 80 days a year, including three straight weeks at the Tour de France, a schedule so demanding that virtually no one could survive it without vitamin supplements, amino acids, and constant medical attention. Caffeine is on the banned list, but a pre-race triple espresso is considered almost mandatory (and is usually invisible by the time the piss tests are done). On top of that, the current rules are really no more than a set of interlocking loopholes that practically encourage a certain level of doping. Many riders are actually permitted to use many of the key items on the banned list, including corticoids (which reduce stress and soreness) and anti-asthmatics (which aid breathing), provided they have a doctor's prescription. Needless to say, there are quite a few diagnosed asthmatics in the pro peloton.

But the drug of choice for the last 10 years has been EPO, which raises the percentage of oxygen-carrying red blood cells (the "hematocrit"). A normal male has a hematocrit between 38 percent and 46 percent, while the International Cycling Union has set an arbitrary limit of 50 percent. Message: Use EPO, but only up to 49 percent. (The UCI has admitted that the average rider's hematocrit has risen 5 percentage points since 1992.) Many of the top riders challenging Lance Armstrong in this year's Tour de France—including Marco Pantani, Richard Virenque, Alex Zulle, and the young phenom Franck Vandenbroucke—have served suspensions for EPO. Before EPO, a genetic freak like Lance Armstrong would have dominated every race he entered because of his superior lungpower. Now he has a tough time eking out victories—and even he is tainted by the clouds of suspicion that loom over the entire sport.

Armstrong's situation shows the downside of partial legalization, which is essentially what is in effect. But what if cycling—and other sports—took up Samaranch's proposal and changed the rules to permit anything that does not endanger a rider's health? Dope-ridden chaos would ensue, naturally. But what if the athletes had to tell us what they were taking?

Under this interesting modification (proposed on the cult Web site cyclegossip.com and elsewhere), non-harmful substances would be permitted, with a catch: Each team doctor would be required to keep a dossier for each athlete, listing the products used, the dosages, and the dates. The doping dossiers would be released along with the race results, allowing the public—and the sponsors—to judge the true victor for themselves.

Drug use, now hidden and prevalent, would become open and prevalent, with worrisome possible consequences: Following their heroes' example, young athletes would queue up for the latest blood boosters and synthetic hormones, whose makers would proudly sponsor them. There would be cheaters, of course, and so the athletes would be tested frequently; any discrepancy between the dossier and the test results would result in severe punishment for the rider—and the team doctor. But would fans bother watching a contest of pharmaceuticals rather than athletics? It seems unlikely. Without fans, there are no sponsors; without sponsors, no sport, at least in a professional sense.

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Bill Gifford is editor at large of Men's Journal. He lives in central Pennsylvania.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments from The Fray:

The author proposes lifting the ban on use by athletes of "drugs that are not harmful". Which drugs would those be? I've been a physician for 15 years, and I have yet to run into a medication without side effects. Even if something like EPO had no true side effects, we have absolutely no assurance that its intended effect of raising the hematocrit is not an inherently risky thing to do in and of itself. The human body has evolved over countless millenia of natural selection, during most of which time we were hunter-gatherers. The ability for hunters to run a little faster a little farther that a raised hematocrit supposedly confers would have been a powerful survival advantage if it did not come attached to some even more powerful survival disadvantage. If the average male human hematocrit is 40 rather than 50, there is probably a reason, as yet inapparent, that more than outweighs whatever advantage the higher blood count confers. Let's not find out what those hidden risks are by letting young athletes conduct unstructured pseudo-medical experiments on themselves

--Glen Tomkins

(To reply, click here.)

EPO is de facto tolerated in cycling because there is no effective test for its use. The hematocrit limit of 50 percent is set as a safety measure for cyclists. Heavy EPO use killed dozens of cyclists in the 1980s and 1990s because extreme hematocrit levels cause blood pooling and clotting, especially during sleep. This is in fact an example of "allowing" use of a performance-enhancing drug, but not at dangerous levels. Cycling permits modest caffeine use by competitors and office staff alike. Big deal. It also encourages use of corticosteroids to suppress joint damage and constricted breathing. To understand why, one must understand the sport. Knee joints of many competitors would be destroyed if anti-inflammatory therapy was not employed. Where is the fun in that? If you want to watch athletes destroy their knees, watch American football and enjoy your lite beer while you're at it (you loser!). Anti-asthmatic medication (greatly) improves the comfort of most cyclists during competition. Athletes in other fields may criticize use of these medications as "performance enhancing", but the entire sport is dependent on performance enhancing devices. They are called (snicker) bicycles.

--Jim Hershberger

(To reply, click here.)

The de facto permission of drug use by way of setting limits via testing rather than absolute zero tolerance seems to be doing a good job of promoting safety at this time, even if it is at the expense of honesty. But the ideal would be a system that promotes both safety and honesty.

--I'm Being Frank

(To reply, click here.)

(9/19)

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