Post by cenydd on Aug 9, 2013 23:10:40 GMT
Doping is all over the sports section these days, which must be a little depressing for sports fans hoping that this was behind us.
On the other hand, if you generally hate being lied to, well, here comes the truth! In a way, this is like getting a bad diagnosis. A harsh day, to be sure. But in reality, nothing like as bad as the unnamed day when you actually got the disease. At least now we can get busy on the cure.
Let the healing begin.
Knowing your enemy is an essential first step of the battle. Back when doping happened entirely in secret, the wise men who led sports -- the executives, the commissioners, the unions and the like -- were shadowboxing an enemy built entirely of guesswork. Who was doping? What with? When? Where?
Now we have a lot of real information. The Mitchell report on baseball. The USADA report on Lance Armstrong and his teammates. The unfolding collection of Biogenesis documents. Now we have dozens of firsthand accounts from everyone from Tyler Hamilton to Kirk Radomski, who are saying, essentially, This is how it really works, and I know because I was one of the ones who lived it.
Many also add how glad they are to have come clean and that it's all over.
When you look at what those people have to say, however, the truth of doping is so very different from what we had imagined.
And so many things we thought we knew about PEDs are proving to have been misguided. The early tests, it turns out, were fairly easy to beat. Yes, even heroes cherished for bravely battling cancer can cheat. And PEDs help with all kinds of things, not just getting big.........
espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/61898/wanted-real-leadership-on-doping
With the list of drug cheats seemingly just getting longer and longer all over the world and in every sport, something surely has to change soon. There has to be even more attention paid to the problem by people at the top level, but then I do find myself wondering how many people at the top level of sports are so involved in the 'culture' of sport and the doping that has been going on for years that they actually don't really want anything done about it. Perhaps some of them are afraid that their sports will be somehow 'diminished' in quality if the top athletes aren't using such things, or even that they themselves will be implicated in it if everything comes out about what has been going on. Something has to be done, though.
