Both are easily tested for, but yes, it would seem that anything that increased your endurance would help. Of course, you can get the same affect by sleeping in a tent that mimics the affect of high altitude. (Yes, they exist.)
In fact, the best argument I’ve heard for legalizing either practice is that you can easily get the same affect naturally, and if done under a doctor’s care they are not dangerous. It is only guys trying to hide that are in danger.
Is the OP ever going to come back to tell us what he meant?
Actually, there IS one sport, and one sport only, that I love, and that is elephant polo, as noted elsewhere on the board. And I can state categorically that not once in the entire 25-year history of the game, nor in the six years it’s been played in Thailand, has any elephant taken steroids.
Sorry, it was a deliberate parody over the fact that Marion Jones had to give up her Olympic medals due to steroids. I thought it was assumed that people would get it. Apologies, I tend to be nonsensical at times.
I was picturing more… hmmm, carnage in that scenario; you know, like a track and field deat match.
The guy from Nigeria is overtakin you?, pick up a throwing hammer and whack him good; but you lost too much time with it and the Ukranian runner is 20 pases ahead of you!, time to use the javelin. Be careful though, check you six for incoming dicusses or some deranged runner going all Don Quixote charging with a pole vault.
Now that´d get big ratings!
Irrelevant, surely? No matter what the ‘sucess’ factors are in a given sport, if two competitors are exactly equal in all of them, the one who uses chemicals will no longer be exactly equal, but will have an edge, and will win more often. If you were a good enough swimmer to be in a dead heat with Thorpe nine times out of ten, then with drugs you might beat him seven or eight times out of ten.
This does not make strength unimportant, merely less important. Even if it’s a decidedly minor factor, with so much at stake in the Olympics, it’s easy to see how swimmers would go ahead and try steroids to get that little edge. Maybe that’s the thing that lets them touch the wall .01 seconds faster than the next guy instead of .01 seconds slower.
I think it is possible that steroids might actually hinder a man’s chances. Bigger muscles do not mean you will swim faster, water resistance is greater, your shoulders are more likely to get injured, and you have to move that extra weight. Look at Michael Phelp’s body. The man is the greatest swimmer ever, and I’m sure many women will confirm he has a nice body - Mrs. Slow was certainly all hot and bothered when she met him - but Arnold he ain’t.
I asked my kids’ swim coach about doping and swimming, once. He was a USA swimming coach for a while. He basically said, “what would be the point for guys?”. If you think about it, I can’t think of a single male swimmer who has lost a medal or a race because of a positive doping test.