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Opinion:
Ever Since PheidippidesBy Tony Monchinski
In 490 BCE, the Athenians routed the Persians at Marathon. The Persians, outnumbering the Greeks two to one, were shocked when the Athenians dared to charge lacking archers or cavalry. Reeling from the ferocious Athenian onslaught, the Persians beat a hasty retreat back to their boats. The victorious Athenians dispatched their fastest runner, Pheidippides, to convey news of the Greek victory to Athens. Ignoring his mounting exhaustion, Pheidippides sprinted more than 26 miles to the home polis. Arriving in Athens, Pheidippides gasped "Rejoice! We conquer!" and abruptly dropped dead.
Ever since Pheidippides, and no doubt before, we have celebrated extremism in sports. Winning isn’t everything. It is the only thing. This maxim holds true for twenty-first century professional sports in capitalist societies. One of the vital ingredients in this victory equation, at least since the 1950s, is drug use.
All drug use, from anabolic steroids to crack cocaine to nicotine, carries risk. I don’t think children should use drugs or be encouraged to use drugs. But I do think that educated adult individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves what they put in their bodies—be it alcohol, heroin, growth hormones or cucumbers—so long as this doesn’t negatively affect others.
Particularly of late, the US government and media have been quite adamant in attacking the perceived horrors and unfair advantages that performance-enhancing substances impart on their users. In their January 18th issue, The New York Times Magazine ran an article titled, “In Pursuit of Doped Excellence,” discussing drug use in sports and possible future genetic manipulation to produce better athletes. A week later the Times featured an article on the East German doping program (“East German Steroids’ Toll: ‘They Killed Heidi’”; 26 January 2004). The Daily News, in “He Lights Their Fires”, detailed the case of New York City firefighter and professional bodybuilder Rodney St. Cloud, who was remanded to desk duty following his arrest for receiving a package of steroids in the mail and failing a drug test then imposed on him (3 February 2004). The left also isn’t immune to the hysteria surrounding performance-enhancing drugs. Yves Engler, writing in Z Magazine, dismisses Ephedra—recently banned for sale in the United States despite a lack of rigorous scientific evidence that it is dangerous—as a “deadly weight-loss drug” (December 2003).
People the world over love sports. Perhaps they help us sublimate innate aggressive drives in a socially acceptable manner. Or maybe we just like shooting hoops, tackling a pig-skin hugging opponent, and seeing how much faster and more muscular we can make ourselves. Professional athletes, however, are not like us. Sure, I can play basketball, and this might make me a basketball player. But there is a qualitative difference between myself and Michael Jordan. Sports fans expect something different from their professional athletes, something they don’t necessarily expect from themselves.
In a word, they expect excellence in play. When we attend a sporting event, be it a college football game or a professional powerlifting contest, we expect to be wowed. Sports drugs allow athletes to push the envelope, to boldly go where no man or woman has gone before. Many will decry this state of affairs. But why?
Is sports drug use cheating? Ostensibly, if everyone else is “clean” and one athlete is using performance-enhancers, then the playing field is not level and this constitutes an unfair advantage. Yet, with the creation of steroids in the 1950s and the explosion in performance-enhancing drugs since, the genie is out of the bottle. What’s more, drug tests can be beaten by masking agents and specially designed testing-invisible drugs. As the ongoing BALCO labs “scandal” in California proves, drug testing only penalizes athletes who cannot afford these expensive evasive products.
Tom Platz, a former professional bodybuilder, encourages us to think of the professional athlete as a sports car. Would you take a Formula One racecar to the local Exxon station and fill it up? Perhaps, and if you did, by dint of its being a sports car, the vehicle might give you a slightly better performance than another car on the road. But fill that racer up with racecar fuel, and you’ll give that vehicle the chance to live up to its potential.
Professional athletes are similar. These men and women represent the genetically gifted. Not only are they physically suited to what they do, but they possess a degree of mental determination that mere novices lack. They represent the extreme bounds of their sports. Extremists will embrace extreme means, from multi-hour daily training sessions to rigorous dieting to an all-enveloping focus on their sport at the expense of social life, family, and, unfortunately for some abusers, their personal physical and mental health. Drugs do not make the athlete. But they allow the athlete to shine brighter than they otherwise would have.
Legislation should play a minimal role in the regulation of sports-drug use. The liberal conception of the state views it as a means of enhancing the individual, not inhibiting her. “Wars on drugs do not work because people enjoy using drugs. Sports drugs are not going to disappear and, currently, their use pervades all sports. Rigorous testing will only encourage athletes to turn to possibly more dangerous masking agents in hopes of passing these tests.
Sports without drugs would be, well, boring. We expect a certain level of play today in the sports we watch, be it ping-pong or cycling. That level of play isn’t possible without sports-drug use. Firefighter Rodney St. Cloud told The Daily News, “I’m a professional bodybuilder, and I took steroids because there is no way you are going to be able to compete without being on steroids.” Steroid use in bodybuilding is obvious. But even stringy long distance runners and cyclists use steroids.
Some argue that sports are a way out for many athletes, a way to escape poverty. I agree. The argument is extended: if this is the only shot these guys and girls have of breaking out of poverty, then it’s not fair that they should feel pressured to turning to illegal and possibly harmful substances to keep up in their game. No one should force anyone to use drugs of any sort. In fact, the state should actively check any such coercion. However, I would go further and caution that we must criticize an unjust economic structure which doesn’t provide a decent standard of living for all peoples and then dangles before the poor a miniscule chance of “making it” in the hyper-competitive world of professional sports. Attacking drug use in sports overlooks more substantial issues of economic injustice and at the same time limits individual liberty.
No one is forcing athletes to use steroids, Ephedra, or any of a myriad of performance boosting drugs. No one forced Pheidippedes to sprint the twenty-six plus miles to Athens. He could have walked or jogged at a slower pace once he got out of sight distance from his comrades. Professional level sports is about glory, about pushing oneself, testing limits, and seeing what the human body can do. This urge cannot be legislated out of existence, and good government should not try to do so. Pheidippedes, after all, wasn’t using Ephedra when he collapsed dead.
Tony Monchinski is a student in the Political Science program.