What is wrong with athletes using performance enhancers

[ruveyn ben yosef 0]

The Olympics topic gives rise to the question in the title.

Athletes use high tech equipment to enhance their performance. For example fiber glass poles for pole vaulting which has added at least a foot to the record heights. High tech running shoes have shaved seconds off running time. Special low friction swim suits have shaved seconds off of swimming race times.

So why not performance enhancing drugs and treatments. As long as the enhancement is made known to the competitors, what is the problem? Super oxidizing the blood could eventually produce a three minute mile. With performance enhancers we could find the ultimate limits of the human body.

ruveyn

[bborg 0]

If you’re competing for skill, then other factors need to be controlled for. It wouldn’t be a fair race if one runner was using high tech running shoes, while another was wearing loafers. Nor would it be particularly safe to run a race in loafers either, which is why performance is not the only factor in choosing equipment. In the end, do you think shoes are a significant factor in who wins, given that everyone is wearing them?

Drugs, though, provide no benefit that I am aware of besides enhancing performance. This skews the result if not everyone is using. It would hardly be fair to expect everyone to use drugs – since that can do damage as well – so it makes sense to me that they would be ruled illegal instead.

[B. Royce 0]

If you’re competing for skill, then other factors need to be controlled for. It wouldn’t be a fair race if one runner was using high tech running shoes, while another was wearing loafers. Nor would it be particularly safe to run a race in loafers either, which is why performance is not the only factor in choosing equipment. In the end, do you think shoes are a significant factor in who wins, given that everyone is wearing them?

Drugs, though, provide no benefit that I am aware of besides enhancing performance. This skews the result if not everyone is using. It would hardly be fair to expect everyone to use drugs – since that can do damage as well – so it makes sense to me that they would be ruled illegal instead.

I disagree about the shoes (and equipment, clothes, generally). A runner should be free to wear whatever shoes he wishes, including running barefoot. It is up to him to decide what he better performs in. Being free is fair.

[bborg 0]

I disagree about the shoes (and equipment, clothes, generally). A runner should be free to wear whatever shoes he wishes, including running barefoot. It is up to him to decide what he better performs in. Being free is fair.

Within limits, yes. However as I said, if the point of the competition is to measure skill, then you need to control for other factors. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a race where everybody just does whatever, and I think it would be interesting to have a race with performance-enhancing drugs to see the big (or low) numbers. However, the results would not show who the best is. And since we're talking about the Olympics, that would be the whole point.

[Stussy88 0]

The Olympics topic gives rise to the question in the title.

Athletes use high tech equipment to enhance their performance. For example fiber glass poles for pole vaulting which has added at least a foot to the record heights. High tech running shoes have shaved seconds off running time. Special low friction swim suits have shaved seconds off of swimming race times.

So why not performance enhancing drugs and treatments. As long as the enhancement is made known to the competitors, what is the problem? Super oxidizing the blood could eventually produce a three minute mile. With performance enhancers we could find the ultimate limits of the human body.

ruveyn

I think the objection is essentially health related. If you know that to compete at the top level, you would need drugs that can and do shorten the lives of athletes who take them (Flo-Jo etc) would you encourage your kids to take up that sport? Also, I think it's meant to be the best athlete wins, not the person with the best chemist. Personally, I don't care what the athletes decide to take.

That said, I firmly believe that in the short sprint events, eight out of eight athletes in the finals will have, at some point, taken performance enhancing substances.

I can also personally vouch for the efficacy of drugs. As a youngster some twenty years ago, I took anabolic steroids for a short period after hitting a plateau in my weight training. The strength gains were absolutely unbelievable, though there were significant side effects and I was taking pretty low dosages compared to some of the guys at my gym.

[ruveyn ben yosef 0]

Drugs, though, provide no benefit that I am aware of besides enhancing performance. This skews the result if not everyone is using. It would hardly be fair to expect everyone to use drugs – since that can do damage as well – so it makes sense to me that they would be ruled illegal instead.

Neither do fancy racing shoes or fiber glass vaulting poles. The only reason they are used is to enhance performance. Consider the bows used in the decathalon archery context. You will never see bows like this used in a game hunt. The only purpose they have is to increase accuracy in the contest. Consider the bikes used in the Tour de France. They are much more expensive than bikes the "ordinary" folks can afford and they are useless in normal street traffic. There only purpose is to produce victories in the bike race.

The only fair contest is one that is consistent with the rules. The rules should not restrict performance enhancing technologies (including drugs or treatments) as long as these are known and available to all and any willing competitors who can get sponsorship and aid in acquiring them. The notion of the un-enhanced "natural" athlete is nonsense. Very few persons have the genetic endowments to be super-athletes. Athletic excellence is a domain open to the few, not the many. In the modern Olympic era, the "amateur" athlete has been idealized and romanticized. In the era of the ancient Olympics, the competitors were professional athletes and the goal was not beauty of form, but winning. The rules were few and the contests (particularly wrestling and boxing) were brutal and often fatal deadly. For the Greek Olympian victory was everything. Coming in second or third did not matter.

The idea that athletic excellence should be available to all, will in its extreme form lead to handicapping such as was satirized in the Vonnegut novel -Harisson Bergeron-.

ruveyn

[piz 0]

The only fair contest is one that is consistent with the rules. The rules should not restrict performance enhancing technologies (including drugs or treatments) as long as these are known and available to all and any willing competitors who can get sponsorship and aid in acquiring them.

Yes, the only fair contest is one that is consistent with the rules. No, the rules "should" not do what you say, if by that you mean that all contests should adopt what you suggest. It should be up to the organizer of the competition to set whatever rules he chooses. As posted elsewhere, it's a matter of contract. If the athletes want to compete, they must agree to the rules, whatever they are. If they allow drugs, so be it. If not, so be it. There is no absolute, context-free "correct" here.

[Free Capitalist 0]

I'll address the core of the poster's question. The conflict between natural, and artificial performance helpers is a vexed one. Sure people were special shoes, but it's not like they're going to check every person's shoe, to detect various little springs. People wore shoes since the beginning, and if they're a little bit better now, then I suppose that couldn't be helped. But the point of Olympics and all athletic contests is to measure human excellence, which means excellence of the internal human body. When you tamper with that, you are stepping outside the point of having these competitions in the first place. The point is not "to win", the point is "to be excellent". When you're not "you" when you win, then you can hardly claim to be excellent.

[piz 0]

I'll address the core of the poster's question. The conflict between natural, and artificial performance helpers is a vexed one. Sure people were special shoes, but it's not like they're going to check every person's shoe, to detect various little springs. People wore shoes since the beginning, and if they're a little bit better now, then I suppose that couldn't be helped. But the point of Olympics and all athletic contests is to measure human excellence, which means excellence of the internal human body. When you tamper with that, you are stepping outside the point of having these competitions in the first place. The point is not "to win", the point is "to be excellent". When you're not "you" when you win, then you can hardly claim to be excellent.

If someone staged a "Steroid Games," in which all manner of drug use was permitted as part of the rules and where the point was not "excellence" as you seem to use it above but to see how much the human body can accomplish (or some other goal consistent with allowing drug-induced enhancements), would you oppose that?

My point is that if the stated point of the Olympics is "excellence," and even more importantly if the conditions of participation forbid them, then I agree with you, and drugs absolutely ought not to be permitted. But that still comes down to a matter of contract - the participants agree to abide by the rules, whatever they are. I disagree that drugs ought to be forbidden at all times and in all situations simply because someone believes that the only "true" athletics are drug-free athletics (not that I necessarily think you believe that, which is why I asked the question above), as if there is some sort of intrinsic, ideal "athleticism" that ought to be adhered to regardless of anything.

[Free Capitalist 0]

If someone staged a "Steroid Games," in which all manner of drug use was permitted as part of the rules and where the point was not "excellence" as you seem to use it above but to see how much the human body can accomplish (or some other goal consistent with allowing drug-induced enhancements), would you oppose that?

Ah but you see, "how much the body can accomplish" is precisely the Olympic goal, precisely the "excellence" goal. In Steroid Games, the pursuit is "what new devices can we come up with", and it shifts the emphasis from the human body, which is constant, to human inventions, which are ever-increasing. Of course I wouldn't oppose Steroid Games, but I would question their very purpose. I mean what the heck is the point? If pumping the body full of steroids, and other enhancers is good, why not just build super-fast robotic bodies attach to human nerves and head? That will surely win most of all!

[B. Royce 0]

I disagree about the shoes (and equipment, clothes, generally). A runner should be free to wear whatever shoes he wishes, including running barefoot. It is up to him to decide what he better performs in. Being free is fair.

Within limits, yes. However as I said, if the point of the competition is to measure skill, then you need to control for other factors. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a race where everybody just does whatever, and I think it would be interesting to have a race with performance-enhancing drugs to see the big (or low) numbers. However, the results would not show who the best is. And since we're talking about the Olympics, that would be the whole point.

Your "the best" here sounds like a floating abstraction. Consider two runners, neither of which uses drugs, both of which are barefoot, but one has been seriously training for 6 months while the other has been training for only two weeks. They run a race. The long-trained runner wins. A spectator says that we don't really know who is best, wait till so-and-so has trained for 6 months.

My point is that no conditions are likely to be the same for all athletes; plus the fact that not all athletes need the same amount of training to be at their optimal best (which itself is not a static thing). In fact, if two athletes trained exactly the same for two weeks (or two months or two years) one would win the race. The other could claim "Not fair, because the winner's body processes food better than mine " (or builds muscle tissue faster, or whatever).

To me, doing your best is constantly exerting your greatest will and determination, not to beat someone, but for its own sake. If you have done that, you have earned noble self-respect, even if you lose the race. If the winner strove not his utmost, he has not done his best and he knows it, even if no one else does.

The joy of the games is watching the intense concentration, the fiercely determined effort of putting it all out there, the totally self-centered focus. Times and distances, measurements and records, are secondary considerations. I would rather watch a drug-enhanced runner giving it his 100% all, than see drug-free, natural talent lazily run around the track.

[ruveyn ben yosef 0]

Ah but you see, "how much the body can accomplish" is precisely the Olympic goal, precisely the "excellence" goal. In Steroid Games, the pursuit is "what new devices can we come up with", and it shifts the emphasis from the human body, which is constant, to human inventions,

Human body plans are NOT constant. There is a degree of genetic variation among humans. And even with that, the way people live and treat their bodies introduces even more variability. Then there is the non-tangible issue of spirit and determination. In athletic performances there is the matter of "heart", that deep down determination to win. Thus a pair of identical twins could differ greatly in their athletic ability and performance.

Here is the rock bottom. Athletic excellence is for the few. We can all bowl or play in a scratch baseball game but few of us can consistently bowl with a 250 average or better. Few of us are of "big league" quality in our athletic capability. We can all run and we can all jump (or nearly all) but very few of us will ever break records regardless of how hard we try.

Championship is as much a matter of the spirit as it is of the body. Steroids or blood-doping would do few of us any good a performance enhancers. If one does not have the drive for victory, no amount of drugs will provide it.

ruveyn

[B. Royce 0]

If someone staged a "Steroid Games," in which all manner of drug use was permitted as part of the rules and where the point was not "excellence" as you seem to use it above but to see how much the human body can accomplish (or some other goal consistent with allowing drug-induced enhancements), would you oppose that?

Ah but you see, "how much the body can accomplish" is precisely the Olympic goal, precisely the "excellence" goal. In Steroid Games, the pursuit is "what new devices can we come up with", and it shifts the emphasis from the human body, which is constant, to human inventions, which are ever-increasing. Of course I wouldn't oppose Steroid Games, but I would question their very purpose. I mean what the heck is the point? If pumping the body full of steroids, and other enhancers is good, why not just build super-fast robotic bodies attach to human nerves and head? That will surely win most of all!

The Olympics is not about "how much the body can accomplish". It is about how much the mind can accomplish using just its body. That's why the original Olympics were performed in the nude. So, if you're going to allow external shoes, why not allow internal drugs? In fact, which aids performance more, drugs or shoes? How many runners today would choose drugs over shoes if they had the choice?

[Free Capitalist 0]

The Olympics is not about "how much the body can accomplish". It is about how much the mind can accomplish using just its body. That's why the original Olympics were performed in the nude.

I dont' see where the disagreement is.

So, if you're going to allow external shoes, why not allow internal drugs?

Because at the moment they're probably not an egregious violation of the very principle you stated "how much the body can accomplish using just its body. The original Olympics were in the nude or in a loincloth, but when revived by the Victorians they had shoes and shirts. That's simply the standard of the modern competition. If they're improving shoes, it's a small enough change. But once you see shoes with thick springs and pneumatic-action, you bet the Olympic Committee will not like it.

[piz 0]

Ah but you see, "how much the body can accomplish" is precisely the Olympic goal, precisely the "excellence" goal. In Steroid Games, the pursuit is "what new devices can we come up with", and it shifts the emphasis from the human body, which is constant, to human inventions, which are ever-increasing. Of course I wouldn't oppose Steroid Games, but I would question their very purpose. I mean what the heck is the point? If pumping the body full of steroids, and other enhancers is good, why not just build super-fast robotic bodies attach to human nerves and head? That will surely win most of all!

I wouldn't see the point of the Steroid Games, or the Partial Robot Games, or the Human Brain and Nerves Only Games, either (although I did enjoy BattleBots when it was on TV ). But on the principle involved we're in agreement.

[Arnold 0]

You make the rules to suit your intentions. Bare foot running could be made a rule and a contest class, to do away with technological competition, for example.

Drug taking should not figure into contests, because the winner would be the one who took the most drugs. The competition then would be to see how much one could take and still live. This would not be a level playing field for someone who respected his health -- and competitions should have that level field.

[ruveyn ben yosef 0]

I mean what the heck is the point? If pumping the body full of steroids, and other enhancers is good, why not just build super-fast robotic bodies attach to human nerves and head? That will surely win most of all!

That is just about what an automobile race is, or a speedboat race or an airplane race. A human nervous system is mated with a machine and the contest is to see which of the man/machine combinations comes in first. There might be some flourishes added to judge the skill and efficiency of the handling. Since the control of the machine is direct and not remote (think of remote controlled unpiloted aircraft here) there is a risk to the human driver which adds some excitement and challenge to the contest. The resulting contest would be a race and a sport, but would it be athletics? I think it wojuld be just as athletic as a horse race which some folks might not consider athletic at all.

ruveyn

[bborg 0]

Your "the best" here sounds like a floating abstraction. Consider two runners, neither of which uses drugs, both of which are barefoot, but one has been seriously training for 6 months while the other has been training for only two weeks. They run a race. The long-trained runner wins. A spectator says that we don't really know who is best, wait till so-and-so has trained for 6 months.

My point is that no conditions are likely to be the same for all athletes; plus the fact that not all athletes need the same amount of training to be at their optimal best (which itself is not a static thing). In fact, if two athletes trained exactly the same for two weeks (or two months or two years) one would win the race. The other could claim "Not fair, because the winner's body processes food better than mine " (or builds muscle tissue faster, or whatever).

I don't see how my usage has implied a floating abstraction. You can't separate a person from his body, we're not talking about some non corporeal spirit winning the race here. Whether that person was favored by biology or not, he has the ability that he has. Nor would everyone have the same training requirements to work at their peak. It should be up to each athlete to decide how to train for the competition. If they fail to train properly, that also is a reflection of their skill and it will show in the results.

My only argument here is that controlling for drugs helps you to measure that skill. I still don't really see why this has produced such disagreement. If you don't care about skill and you just want to have a competition where people use every resource available to them that's fine. The rules of any contest depend on what the contest is supposed to measure.

To me, doing your best is constantly exerting your greatest will and determination, not to beat someone, but for its own sake. If you have done that, you have earned noble self-respect, even if you lose the race. If the winner strove not his utmost, he has not done his best and he knows it, even if no one else does.

The joy of the games is watching the intense concentration, the fiercely determined effort of putting it all out there, the totally self-centered focus. Times and distances, measurements and records, are secondary considerations. I would rather watch a drug-enhanced runner giving it his 100% all, than see drug-free, natural talent lazily run around the track.

Why do you think I disagree with these statements? I've said nothing about "doing your best", and why do you use laziness as the alternative to drug-enhanced?

[ruveyn ben yosef 0]

...... snippage ......

To me, doing your best is constantly exerting your greatest will and determination, not to beat someone, but for its own sake. If you have done that, you have earned noble self-respect, even if you lose the race. If the winner strove not his utmost, he has not done his best and he knows it, even if no one else does.

The joy of the games is watching the intense concentration, the fiercely determined effort of putting it all out there, the totally self-centered focus. Times and distances, measurements and records, are secondary considerations. I would rather watch a drug-enhanced runner giving it his 100% all, than see drug-free, natural talent lazily run around the track.

Most athletes are motivated by beating the competition. They -need- the competition to bring out their best performance. Very few athletes are motivated by abstract goal of doing their best. In ancient Greece during the original era of the Olympiad the athlete had two goals: win and win. The idea of doing ones best for the sake of doing one's best was an attitude promoted by the upper classes during the modern Olympic era. They promoted the doctrine of the purely motivated amateur. See -Chariots of Fire- with Ben Cross. There is a marvelous scene where Cross playing Harold Abrahams has a dispute with the dean of Gauis College (Cambridge) about the proper athletic spirit. Abrahams takes the position that the purpose of running the race is to -win- the race, not simply to be excellent. There is another scene where he tells his lady love that he runs to win and if he can't win he won't run.

You will see just as much focus and concentration in athletes who are playing to win and earn large amounts of money and some rather lucrative promotional contracts. Running for $$$ often brings out the best in us. Going for the buck is an honest and straightforward motive. It also accounts for the now wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs and technologies. Profit and competition produces the best results.

I love the profit motive. It is so ....understandable....

ruveyn

[Free Capitalist 0]

In ancient Greece during the original era of the Olympiad the athlete had two goals: win and win. The idea of doing ones best for the sake of doing one's best was an attitude promoted by the upper classes during the modern Olympic era.

Running for $$$ often brings out the best in us. Going for the buck is an honest and straightforward motive. It also accounts for the now wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs and technologies. Profit and competition produces the best results.

I love the profit motive. It is so ....understandable....

That's a fairly unpleasant thing to say. Money in principle is an honorable thing, but some things, such as personal convictions, aren't for sale. If you reduce everything to the profit motive, then we have a lot more disagreements that I care to go into in this thread. Do you know what the Olympic victors got in the ancient days? A laurel wreath. That's all. No endorsements, no huge chunks of money, no major financial inducements at home. They competed for honor, and simply to have the laurel wreath, that highest badge of excellence, while their competitors got nothing, was the highest indication of honor and personal excellence they ever needed.

[Betsy Speicher 0]

Running for $$$ often brings out the best in us. Going for the buck is an honest and straightforward motive. It also accounts for the now wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs and technologies. Profit and competition produces the best results.

I love the profit motive. It is so ....understandable....

That's a fairly unpleasant thing to say. Money in principle is an honorable thing, but some things, such as personal convictions, aren't for sale. If you reduce everything to the profit motive, then we have a lot more disagreements that I care to go into in this thread.

Ruveyn isn't saying any such thing! His point was that the profit motive can be a great motivator to the achievement of genuine values, not that it trumps all other considerations.

[B. Royce 0]

...... snippage ......

To me, doing your best is constantly exerting your greatest will and determination, not to beat someone, but for its own sake. If you have done that, you have earned noble self-respect, even if you lose the race. If the winner strove not his utmost, he has not done his best and he knows it, even if no one else does.

The joy of the games is watching the intense concentration, the fiercely determined effort of putting it all out there, the totally self-centered focus. Times and distances, measurements and records, are secondary considerations. I would rather watch a drug-enhanced runner giving it his 100% all, than see drug-free, natural talent lazily run around the track.

Most athletes are motivated by beating the competition. They -need- the competition to bring out their best performance. Very few athletes are motivated by abstract goal of doing their best. In ancient Greece during the original era of the Olympiad the athlete had two goals: win and win. The idea of doing ones best for the sake of doing one's best was an attitude promoted by the upper classes during the modern Olympic era. They promoted the doctrine of the purely motivated amateur. See -Chariots of Fire- with Ben Cross. There is a marvelous scene where Cross playing Harold Abrahams has a dispute with the dean of Gauis College (Cambridge) about the proper athletic spirit. Abrahams takes the position that the purpose of running the race is to -win- the race, not simply to be excellent. There is another scene where he tells his lady love that he runs to win and if he can't win he won't run.

You will see just as much focus and concentration in athletes who are playing to win and earn large amounts of money and some rather lucrative promotional contracts. Running for $$$ often brings out the best in us. Going for the buck is an honest and straightforward motive. It also accounts for the now wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs and technologies. Profit and competition produces the best results.

I love the profit motive. It is so ....understandable....

ruveyn

Points well made, well taken. I agree with your last paragraph, though there is a difference in spiritual reward between doing your best while losing the race and not doing your best.

[PhilO 0]

Points well made, well taken. I agree with your last paragraph, though there is a difference in spiritual reward between doing your best while losing the race and not doing your best.

I think the problem with "doing your best" is that it's too abstract to constitute a real goal. If your goal is to win a race, there are completely objective measures of what it takes to win the race (go 500 laps at the Indianapolis racetrack before any other car, run a certain number of meters faster than any opponent, etc.) Without specific goals that lead to a hierarchy of sub-goals, your subconscious and motivation is left with a floating abstraction that it can't handle. A man might run a particular race in T seconds one year and consider that his best possible effort, but then set himself a goal to run it in T-1 seconds the next year, and succeed. Was he not "doing his best" the previous year? Given a goal, men can improve, so it is not a static target. Or going to school: the (supposedly) objective measure of success is grades, which means that students should set themselves the goal of a particular grade and then do whatever work is required to make it rather than "doing their best". If that means pushing past earlier "maximum effort", then their "best" has really been improved upon, driven by measurement against goal achievement.

I'm starting to think that the phrase should be set aside. There's the famous scene in Star Wars where Luke is trying to lift the ship out of the mud then gives up, stating the effect that he's trying as best he can. Yoda states "There is no try - there is only do, or not do." Leaving aside the mysticism of the context (Luke was using "The Force") I think that's a good way of looking at things. (Also related is a quip from a Heinlein character: The universe doesn't pay off for a good try.)

A goal does exist in a certain context; the athletes who take drugs such as steroids are dropping the context that such drugs are forbidden as a means to achieve the goal.

[B. Royce 0]

Points well made, well taken. I agree with your last paragraph, though there is a difference in spiritual reward between doing your best while losing the race and not doing your best.

I think the problem with "doing your best" is that it's too abstract to constitute a real goal. If your goal is to win a race, there are completely objective measures of what it takes to win the race (go 500 laps at the Indianapolis racetrack before any other car, run a certain number of meters faster than any opponent, etc.) Without specific goals that lead to a hierarchy of sub-goals, your subconscious and motivation is left with a floating abstraction that it can't handle. A man might run a particular race in T seconds one year and consider that his best possible effort, but then set himself a goal to run it in T-1 seconds the next year, and succeed. Was he not "doing his best" the previous year? Given a goal, men can improve, so it is not a static target. Or going to school: the (supposedly) objective measure of success is grades, which means that students should set themselves the goal of a particular grade and then do whatever work is required to make it rather than "doing their best". If that means pushing past earlier "maximum effort", then their "best" has really been improved upon, driven by measurement against goal achievement.

I'm starting to think that the phrase should be set aside. There's the famous scene in Star Wars where Luke is trying to lift the ship out of the mud then gives up, stating the effect that he's trying as best he can. Yoda states "There is no try - there is only do, or not do." Leaving aside the mysticism of the context (Luke was using "The Force") I think that's a good way of looking at things. (Also related is a quip from a Heinlein character: The universe doesn't pay off for a good try.)

A goal does exist in a certain context; the athletes who take drugs such as steroids are dropping the context that such drugs are forbidden as a means to achieve the goal.

Good points, Phil. Though, if the competition is fierce, I wouldn't expect to have a chance of winning a race if I didn't give my best effort at the time, under whatever conditions or rules.

[PhilO 0]

[...] if the competition is fierce, I wouldn't expect to have a chance of winning a race if I didn't give my best effort at the time, under whatever conditions or rules.

That's the problem, though - *how* do you gauge when your effort is the "best effort"? You need a goal to make the effort objective, and then you either achieve the goal - or not.

For example, if somebody said, and you agreed to the effort, "Run from point A to point B, give it your best try" vs. "A hungry grizzly bear is starting to chase you, you are standing at point A - if you make it to point B you'll escape, otherwise ...", do you think that your time in case #2 would be better than #1? Probably.