[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
This would seem to answer to the possibility of steroid abuse in swimming, but there are plenty of other ways to cheat. What about EPO or blood packing?
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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.
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.
[QUOTE=Queen of Town]
Is the OP ever going to come back to tell us what he meant?
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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.
[QUOTE=ianzin]
Everyone lines up at the start, they fire the gun, whoever gets to the finishing tape first is the winner. How you get there is up to you, and no questions asked. If you’re taking steroids or Zeus knows what else, that’s up to you.
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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.
[QUOTE=SlowMindThinking]
I do not believe most would use them. Maybe HS kids, who wouldn’t really using them for swimming but for looks. Possibly the free style sprint specialists, for whom power is most important. Flexibility, range of motion, and feel for the water (the real reason swimmers shave) are much more important. For example, I am bigger and stronger than all but two or three guys in my Masters swim group, but I’m one of the slower guys. Since injuries have compounded my natural inflexibility, my lack of speed is predictable. In this country, in addition, swimming is not a socially empowering sport like football, which also reduces the incentive to dope.
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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.
[QUOTE=SlowMindThinking]
Flexibility, range of motion, and feel for the water (the real reason swimmers shave) are much more important.
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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.