We can’t help to look at elite athletes as gods. We are always overwhelmed
for what they do. We wonder how far they can go and what it takes to get there.
We live fascinated with their skills.
But elite sport, has another face that, like it or
not, you are going to see in any moment.
First, nature does its own selection by genetic. Most
of elite athletes have any particular biological characteristic that makes them
adequate for their sport. Great height, long legs, exorbitant oxygen
consumption, conveniently distributed muscle fibers and so on…
Those who are lucky enough to have any of those
mutations, are the ones that we usually see on TV doing these incredible
performances. Those are the gifted ones!
The problem lies in those who want to become elite
athletes and they don’t have any outstanding biological advantage. My coach
once told me: “you find two types of athletes. The gifted ones and the ones who
must work harder to barely get to the level of the gifted ones”. He’s totally
right!
To be honest, most of the athletes you see are pure
hard-workers, they’re kind of stubborn with the idea of becoming one day the
next world or Olympic champion. Others (much more realistic) conform to making
state or national teams.
They spend long hours of training, energy, they make
lots of sacrifices in their personal lives, they mortgage their health (because
elite training is not healthy) and do anything for that dream. They may get some
good results (if we consider that wise statement: “hard work beats talent when
talent doesn’t work hard”) but when they have to face a gifted athlete who has
worked as hard as them (or even harder), they finally understand the
difference.
It’s kind of unfair, because at the end of the day
you’re nobody if you don’t have any relevant victory. As Bill Gates said in one
of his life rules: “the world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will
expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself”. People
won’t care how hard you train, they just expect you to do something remarkable.
The truth is that the ones who get the front pages of the newspapers are the
gold medalists.
So far I’ve talked about how unfair is elite sport for
the non-gifted. Now let’s see how hard it is for the gifted ones.
It’s just summarized in one single word: interest.
Governments, Federations, Leagues, clubs… don’t care
about the health of the elite athletes or their future, they only use their victories
to flaunt about their politics, system or administration. And if you, as elite
athlete, don’t obtain a remarkable result, you better find something else to
make a living.
Doping is an open secret in elite sport.
In the context of the cold war, where USSR and USA had
their fighting, sport was a perfect stage to prove who was better. The athletes
were more like lab rats and as the drug testing was limited, there was an open
field for creating performance enhancing drugs that won’t be discovered.
East Germany government developed the most
sophisticated doping program on earth. A system that made this country with about
16 million of habitants become a world leader in sports at the 70’s and 80’s. Men
and women were given Oral Turinabol, a strong anabolic steroid that made them
true machines. Women were seriously masculinized (just look at Heidi Krieger
case). At that time, Marita Koch broke the 400m world record by a huge margin
that won’t ever be touched by a clean athlete just as the androgen Jarmilla
Kratochvilová at the 800m.
Americans had to step it up a notch too. Flo Jo case
make you lift your eyebrows. With 28 years she went from a discreet mark to a
stratospheric 100m world record in just some few months (don't tell me that after breaking a WR in 100m by such a margin you end up smiling, hugging and waving). After that, when the
surprise drug tests begin in 1989, she immediately retired. Bob Kersee is a genious!
Another case to consider is Carl Lewis. We all know
the story of the 1988 Olympics when Ben Johnson beat him but it was found that
Johnson was doped so Carl Lewis was the “real” winner. What most of the people
ignore is that in April 2003 Sports Illustrated published USOC official
documents that prove that Lewis and other 11 American athletes tested positive
by ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenilpropalamine but they argued that they
did it with no intention. So case was dismissed. Today, Carl Lewis is still a
respected retired athlete, he keeps going to all kinds of events as a great
personality and American media seems to ignore what he did.
Not to mention recent cases like Lance Armstrong, Marion
Jones, Tim Montgomery, Asafa Powell, Tyson Gay, Veronica Campbell Brown and
long list of recognized elite athletes that have been discovered.
Elite sport is a dirty business and we are being
constantly cheated by these gods of sport. It's humanly impossible to get to certain levels without the use of performance enhancing drugs and it seems that those who are smart enought to cover it, are the ones who succeed.
