The Skater-Cloner Weighs In on Doping:
With the BALCO drug scandal, the drug problems in track and field and pro baseball, and the controversies surrounding the Tour de France, a lot has been said about drugs in sports lately. With my background in molecular biology and my experience as an internationally competitive speedskater, people might be interested in what I have to say on this topic.
Being an athlete and a scientist is a combination that could have some interesting implications. In fact, I do have both the connections and the ability that would theoretically enable me to obtain and/or make some types of performance-enhancing substances for myself or for my team.
A couple of years ago, there was a rumor going around the National Team that "Eva is making EPO for herself in her garage!" I think I must have started this rumor myself, just to be funny - I even printed a copy of the recombinant EPO plasmid from the Invitrogen catalog! (Honestly, if you've seen my absolutely pathetic VO2 Max test results or my hematocrit, you'll know that I'm not on EPO!!!)
A few days ago, just for fun, I tested myself to see if I could come up with a list of supplies I would need in order to make up a batch of recombinant EPO. Somewhere in my brain, out from under the layers of speedskating technique, sports politics crap, and the lyrics to my favorite songs, I managed to dig up a shopping list that was absolutely frightening in its detail and accuracy. It was then that I realized that, given the money, I could easily make recombinant EPO if I wanted to, BUT I DON'T WANT TO. I DON'T BELIEVE IN DOPING, AND I WILL TELL YOU WHY.
1. Doping is Cheating
I think most people will agree that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is a violation of fair play. Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of justice, but I'm not going to apologize for feeling this way. I'm not going to cut these cheaters any slack.
From a scientific point of view, I know that these drugs work, and because I know for a fact that they work, the performance of any athlete who uses these drugs is of no interest to me. If I took drugs to improve my performance, then MY OWN performance would be of no interest to me! I am only interested in how far I can get on my own natural ability and the strength of my own will.
Clara Hughes, the great Canadian long distance skater, just wrote a very interesting post about pain tolerance in training and racing. Pushing the pain threshold in training is one way of improving performance without using drugs. People admire athletes for different reasons, and the athletes I have always admired the most are the ones who are not always the most gifted, but the ones who can take a great deal of pain.
Another method of out-performing the competition is by perfecting the technique of your sport. This is especially effective for a highly technical sport such as speedskating.
2. Doping is unhealthy and unsafe
The use of steroids can lead to several long-and short-term health consequences, ranging from "'roid rage" and changes in sex characteristics, to liver failure and cancer. Athletes have dropped dead from overuse of EPO that caused their blood to run as thick as molasses. The abuse of human growth hormone can cause a person's skull to actually change shape, even in adulthood. Also, my teammate Andrew Love recently made an interesting post about steroids and depression.
In the early days of drugs and sports (in the late 1800's), runners and cyclists used doses of strychnine (rat poison!!!) to increase muscle tension, and shots of brandy to dull the pain near the end of endurance events. Throughout the early to mid 1900's, various cocktails of speed and painkillers were used, especially in cycling. Sometimes, the consequences were deadly.
The anti-doping movement was a relatively recent development; it really got under way in the 1960's. One of the main stories that brought attention to the drug problem in sports was when a cyclist dropped dead on the top of Mt. Ventoux in the Tour de France, of an overdose of amphetamines.
Some people have a philosophy that doping can level the playing field among athletes who weren't born with the same physical gifts, or that doping is just a necessary part of being a professional or elite athlete. I've tried to understand this viewpoint. After all, how fair can it be, that one person is born with a huge set of lungs, or with an amazing capacity for building muscle mass? In this case, wouldn't drugs make things "more fair for everyone else?"
In the end, I concluded that the reason why I could never agree with this philosophy is because doping is so unsafe and unhealthy. It all comes down to the vision of the future of sport. Would anyone want their children to think that it is necessary to do drugs in order to compete?
I believe that the abuse of performance-enhancing substances is more prevalent in some sports than in others. I just finished reading a book called "The Crooked Path to Victory: Drugs and Cheating in Professional Bicycle Racing," by Les Woodland. The stories of the rampant drug abuse that has been a part of that sport since its beginning are horrifying. Things may be a bit cleaner in cycling in this modern era, but it was only in 1998 that the entire Festina team got busted, and sporadic positive tests still occur in the peloton all the time.
Many people feel that the Tour de France has been a great boost to the sport of cycling in recent years. I feel that being a fan of the Tour or not being a fan of the Tour is a matter of personal choice; you need to take the given information into account and draw your own conclusion as to whether the riders are, for the most part, worth admiring or not.
A Tour de France cyclist once said that, for him, the decision to use drugs was like deciding not to be the only one following the speed limit when everyone around him is driving much faster than the law allows. After all, he thought, why should he be the only one following the rules, when his options were either to use drugs to help him keep up with the peloton, or to go back to being a house painter?
I've tried so hard to be a fan of the Tour de France, but considering all of the available information, I'm just not able to be. Why, for example, should a cyclist have connections with some shady doctor with a dubious history? Why should a cyclist take the time to shake every last drop out of his water bottle onto the ground before throwing it aside? Is this the behavior of a person with nothing to hide?
In the sport of track and field, which has recently come under scrutiny, a lot of people suspect Marion Jones of using steroids from BALCO, considering her connections to various other athletes and trainers who have been implicated in this case. I'd say that another bit of evidence is purely biological. Can you guess what happens when you give your body a supply of hormones from the outside? It reduces its ability to produce these hormones on its own. As a result, athletic performance after going off steroids can be reduced to a level far below the person's natural potential. So, where's the data? Just look at the results from this summer's track and field Nationals.
If it turns out that Marion Jones was on steroids, then all I can say is that I feel really sorry for all the women who got silver medals to her gold ones. They sure lost a great deal of money on potential endorsements.
Now, let us turn our attention to my own sport of speedskating. There are a few drugs that would be helpful in improving a speedskater's performance. These are mainly "designer steroids" and human growth hormone. Surprisingly, after some reading and discussion on the topic, I have come to believe that EPO might not be all that helpful to a speedskater, since the main limiting factor on our performance seems to be more localized fatigue in the legs, rather than whole-body oxygen transport.
Positive doping tests have been rare in speedskating, but I suspect that our sport might not be as clean as we think. Just this summer, a competitor was caught by a surprise test, but the ISU has not yet issued an official statement on what is to be done about her test results.
Fortunately for me, I believe that it is possible to succeed in speedskating without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. If I didn't feel that this was possible, then I would quit! Look at Jennifer Rodriguez, who won the World Sprints last year and is almost always on the World Cup podium in the 1500 meters. I believe that she is clean, and that she wins because of superior technique, and because the endurance base that she developed from her years in inline skating and as an All-rounder enables her to hold speed throughout a 1000 or 1500-meter race.
As for the doping cheaters, I won't wait around for them to be found and taken out. I will just work harder to make myself the best skater I can be - without any artificial help - and trust that it will be enough.
With the BALCO drug scandal, the drug problems in track and field and pro baseball, and the controversies surrounding the Tour de France, a lot has been said about drugs in sports lately. With my background in molecular biology and my experience as an internationally competitive speedskater, people might be interested in what I have to say on this topic.
Being an athlete and a scientist is a combination that could have some interesting implications. In fact, I do have both the connections and the ability that would theoretically enable me to obtain and/or make some types of performance-enhancing substances for myself or for my team.
A couple of years ago, there was a rumor going around the National Team that "Eva is making EPO for herself in her garage!" I think I must have started this rumor myself, just to be funny - I even printed a copy of the recombinant EPO plasmid from the Invitrogen catalog! (Honestly, if you've seen my absolutely pathetic VO2 Max test results or my hematocrit, you'll know that I'm not on EPO!!!)
A few days ago, just for fun, I tested myself to see if I could come up with a list of supplies I would need in order to make up a batch of recombinant EPO. Somewhere in my brain, out from under the layers of speedskating technique, sports politics crap, and the lyrics to my favorite songs, I managed to dig up a shopping list that was absolutely frightening in its detail and accuracy. It was then that I realized that, given the money, I could easily make recombinant EPO if I wanted to, BUT I DON'T WANT TO. I DON'T BELIEVE IN DOPING, AND I WILL TELL YOU WHY.
1. Doping is Cheating
I think most people will agree that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is a violation of fair play. Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of justice, but I'm not going to apologize for feeling this way. I'm not going to cut these cheaters any slack.
From a scientific point of view, I know that these drugs work, and because I know for a fact that they work, the performance of any athlete who uses these drugs is of no interest to me. If I took drugs to improve my performance, then MY OWN performance would be of no interest to me! I am only interested in how far I can get on my own natural ability and the strength of my own will.
Clara Hughes, the great Canadian long distance skater, just wrote a very interesting post about pain tolerance in training and racing. Pushing the pain threshold in training is one way of improving performance without using drugs. People admire athletes for different reasons, and the athletes I have always admired the most are the ones who are not always the most gifted, but the ones who can take a great deal of pain.
Another method of out-performing the competition is by perfecting the technique of your sport. This is especially effective for a highly technical sport such as speedskating.
2. Doping is unhealthy and unsafe
The use of steroids can lead to several long-and short-term health consequences, ranging from "'roid rage" and changes in sex characteristics, to liver failure and cancer. Athletes have dropped dead from overuse of EPO that caused their blood to run as thick as molasses. The abuse of human growth hormone can cause a person's skull to actually change shape, even in adulthood. Also, my teammate Andrew Love recently made an interesting post about steroids and depression.
In the early days of drugs and sports (in the late 1800's), runners and cyclists used doses of strychnine (rat poison!!!) to increase muscle tension, and shots of brandy to dull the pain near the end of endurance events. Throughout the early to mid 1900's, various cocktails of speed and painkillers were used, especially in cycling. Sometimes, the consequences were deadly.
The anti-doping movement was a relatively recent development; it really got under way in the 1960's. One of the main stories that brought attention to the drug problem in sports was when a cyclist dropped dead on the top of Mt. Ventoux in the Tour de France, of an overdose of amphetamines.
Some people have a philosophy that doping can level the playing field among athletes who weren't born with the same physical gifts, or that doping is just a necessary part of being a professional or elite athlete. I've tried to understand this viewpoint. After all, how fair can it be, that one person is born with a huge set of lungs, or with an amazing capacity for building muscle mass? In this case, wouldn't drugs make things "more fair for everyone else?"
In the end, I concluded that the reason why I could never agree with this philosophy is because doping is so unsafe and unhealthy. It all comes down to the vision of the future of sport. Would anyone want their children to think that it is necessary to do drugs in order to compete?
I believe that the abuse of performance-enhancing substances is more prevalent in some sports than in others. I just finished reading a book called "The Crooked Path to Victory: Drugs and Cheating in Professional Bicycle Racing," by Les Woodland. The stories of the rampant drug abuse that has been a part of that sport since its beginning are horrifying. Things may be a bit cleaner in cycling in this modern era, but it was only in 1998 that the entire Festina team got busted, and sporadic positive tests still occur in the peloton all the time.
Many people feel that the Tour de France has been a great boost to the sport of cycling in recent years. I feel that being a fan of the Tour or not being a fan of the Tour is a matter of personal choice; you need to take the given information into account and draw your own conclusion as to whether the riders are, for the most part, worth admiring or not.
A Tour de France cyclist once said that, for him, the decision to use drugs was like deciding not to be the only one following the speed limit when everyone around him is driving much faster than the law allows. After all, he thought, why should he be the only one following the rules, when his options were either to use drugs to help him keep up with the peloton, or to go back to being a house painter?
I've tried so hard to be a fan of the Tour de France, but considering all of the available information, I'm just not able to be. Why, for example, should a cyclist have connections with some shady doctor with a dubious history? Why should a cyclist take the time to shake every last drop out of his water bottle onto the ground before throwing it aside? Is this the behavior of a person with nothing to hide?
In the sport of track and field, which has recently come under scrutiny, a lot of people suspect Marion Jones of using steroids from BALCO, considering her connections to various other athletes and trainers who have been implicated in this case. I'd say that another bit of evidence is purely biological. Can you guess what happens when you give your body a supply of hormones from the outside? It reduces its ability to produce these hormones on its own. As a result, athletic performance after going off steroids can be reduced to a level far below the person's natural potential. So, where's the data? Just look at the results from this summer's track and field Nationals.
If it turns out that Marion Jones was on steroids, then all I can say is that I feel really sorry for all the women who got silver medals to her gold ones. They sure lost a great deal of money on potential endorsements.
Now, let us turn our attention to my own sport of speedskating. There are a few drugs that would be helpful in improving a speedskater's performance. These are mainly "designer steroids" and human growth hormone. Surprisingly, after some reading and discussion on the topic, I have come to believe that EPO might not be all that helpful to a speedskater, since the main limiting factor on our performance seems to be more localized fatigue in the legs, rather than whole-body oxygen transport.
Positive doping tests have been rare in speedskating, but I suspect that our sport might not be as clean as we think. Just this summer, a competitor was caught by a surprise test, but the ISU has not yet issued an official statement on what is to be done about her test results.
Fortunately for me, I believe that it is possible to succeed in speedskating without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. If I didn't feel that this was possible, then I would quit! Look at Jennifer Rodriguez, who won the World Sprints last year and is almost always on the World Cup podium in the 1500 meters. I believe that she is clean, and that she wins because of superior technique, and because the endurance base that she developed from her years in inline skating and as an All-rounder enables her to hold speed throughout a 1000 or 1500-meter race.
As for the doping cheaters, I won't wait around for them to be found and taken out. I will just work harder to make myself the best skater I can be - without any artificial help - and trust that it will be enough.
posted by Eva at 1:29 PM
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