Outside magazine, January 2004.
Drug Test
As for the larger issue of drugs in sports, eight months in the world of the artificially enhanced convinced me more than ever that it's critical for an organization like the World Anti-Doping Agency to succeed. This group, founded after the Salt Lake Olympics by Canadian anti-doping leader D
ick Pound, represents the most serious international attempt to come to grips with sports doping. WADA is the logical response to an argument that gets aired from time to time: that since cheating is impossible to eliminate, the only recourse is to simply legalize everything—that way, no athlete has a hidden advantage over another, since everyone would be free to try anything that might increase endurance.
Like a lot of powerfully bad ideas, that one has a certain mad logic. But it would turn every sport into a test of how much damage an athlete was willing to risk to improve performance, and would basically force every serious athlete to cheat and risk his or her health. Athletic contests would have a strange life-or-death quality. If we don't keep drugs out of these events, they become freak shows, the athletes like gladiators—with us playing the role of decadent Romans, urging them on.
Besides, on a fundamental level, drugs ruin the simple joy of competition. With drugs in the mix, it's not about the athletes, it's about the chemistry.
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