Monday 27 August 2007

Where Are The Drugged Up Athletes?

The World Athletic Championships from Japan have been dominating the Television Schedules and as the Asian country is 8 hours ahead of the UK, it is a late night or an early morning to catch the best action.
As much as i enjoy watching super-fit men and women run, jump and throw things, two things taint the experience for me.
Firstly, as a Brit, i know we are going to suck and not bother the Airport maximum luggage weight rule with bags weighed down by medals.
Secondly, and maybe this is just me being cynical, but there is always a niggling doubt at the back of my mind that the fastest or strongest has been chemically enhanced.
At the time of writing, there has not been any positive drugs tests from Osaka but there has been some debate over athletes who have been previously banned being allowed to complete.
The current rule is to ban them for two years and then allow them back into competition but surely the best deterrent would be to ban them for life or at the very least increase the length of the ban as to make it virtually impossible for any athlete to come back.
Maybe we will go through this World Athletics Championship clean and we can all then debate whether the Athletes have finally cleaned up their act or maybe it has just been that the dirty ones have managed to mask their drugs more effectively.

1 comment:

Cody Bones said...

What Would the athletes of 100 years ago think about vitamens, modern nutrition, supplements, computer aided training, etc? This doesn't even include performance enhancing drugs.