[1] In an event little-noted outside the swimming world, the
U.S. women's 4X200 freestyle relay broke the oldest world record on
the books in the Athens Olympics. The 17-year-old mark was
set by the team from the German Democratic Republic and was widely
viewed as tainted by the East German team's steroid use. East
German women (in some cases, girls as young as 11 years old) were
given "vitamin" pills to take which were doses of steroids high
enough to provide some outstanding international performances-and
to cause permanent health damage to some of them.
[2] Thanks to the Athens Olympics steroid use is in the news-a
shot-putter was stripped of her gold medal because of a positive
drug test, and a hefty proportion of the weightlifters were
similarly disqualified-and that doesn't includes athletes who were
left home because the doping was detected during Olympic
Trials. Back home in the U.S. we have a number of track stars
cooling their heels because of positive test results. These
days it seems as if reclaiming a world record or a gold medal from
athlete only results in a domino effect as others tumble from
grace.
[3] A few have noted that doping allegations seem to be centered
in certain sports. No doubt part of it is the nature of the
sport in question. Taking steroids might make an athlete run
faster and impart greater endurance in soccer, but would not
provide the coordination, technique, and good teamwork needed to
win. Sports in which strength and endurance are key seem to
be more heavily populated with athletes who are using illicit
drugs, and so weightlifting and track and field have a relatively
large proportion of positive test results.
[4] A number of people have named the money available in track
and field and professional sports (we like to call it
"commodification") as the culprit, but that seems at best a partial
explanation. Commodification might explain why an American
track star who stands to make a six-figure income off a gold medal
would incorporate steroids into training, but the money available
to even an Olympic-level weightlifter would be paltry by
comparison. Commodification certainly has little to no
bearing on why East German and (and later Chinese) swimmers would
have been doping their way to world class swims. There are
other, more important factors that are overlooked in making this
judgment.
[5] To use performance-enhancing drugs requires a conspiracy of
silence. Swimmers generally train in a team-it's too
expensive and difficult to get competition-sized pool time for just
one person-and in training with each other day in and day out, they
know their training partners. They know the hard work,
perseverance and talent that accompany improvement. A swimmer
who dropped her times suddenly without changing training or
technique would be noticed by her teammates. Coaches
certainly should suspect something if they are not actually
responsible for doping. When Irish swimmer Michelle Smith,
married to a discus thrower suspended for high testosterone levels
who became her coach, dropped her times dramatically after only
hovering on the fringes of international competition and won three
gold medals in the 1996 Olympics, other swimmers raised
doubts. More than one media account of those doubts suggested
sour grapes, but when Smith was banned from competition a few years
later for tampering with an out-of-competition drug test, the
doubts were vindicated.
[6] The media has often cooperated in that conspiracy of
silence-as athletes raise the possibility of doping, as Shirley
Babashoff did at the Montreal Olympics, they are accused of
jealousy or worse. Chinese sports authorities responded that
Westerners were racist when doubts were raised publicly about the
performance of the Chinese women in the 1996 Olympics. Two years
later, a Chinese swimmer headed to the World Championships was
caught with steroids in her bag, a number of swimmers failed drug
tests, and the Chinese sports authorities had to admit that some of
its swimmers had been using performance-enhancing drugs.
Though they were careful to stress this was a few unsupervised
swimmers (sound a bit like Abu Ghraib?), Asiaweek.com points out
that a year's supply of the drugs found in the swimmer's bag is
several times the salary of a coach, and far more than a swimmer
would make.1
[7] Because of this need for silence, for coaches to look the
other way if a swimmer improves dramatically and suspiciously, for
teammates and competitors to ignore suspicions, dramatic examples
of drug use seem to flourish under similar conditions. The common
denominator is not money, the common denominator is violating the
oldest ethical principle in the books-using the athlete as means,
not and end in herself.
[8] The Chinese and East German swimmers were moving parts in a
swimming machine. Youngsters were removed from home and
parental supervision, their schoolwork was minimized, their
training time was maximized, and they lived together to eat,
breathe, and sleep their sport. Michelle Smith was eating,
breathing, and sleeping swimming because she was married to her
coach. The East German swimmers were not told what they were
given, though many of them suspected when their physique began to
change. These swimmers' closest associations were all with
people whose interest in them lay in their swimming talent.
East German coaches didn't see their 11-year-olds as women who
would grow old and develop liver tumors, and they didn't see them
as potential bearers of children who could be harmed by the drugs
they were given. The female swimmers must have suspected foul
play when they began singing bass, but they were discouraged from
questioning authority. One swimmer was quoted in a German
newspaper saying "What they really wanted was our minds. They
wanted us to stop questioning, to be mute."2 They were encouraged to think
of themselves as means for the greater glory of the GDR, not human
beings with a potential for a life beyond swimming.
[9] This is not to say there were never doping examples outside
of the three I have chosen-U.S. Swimming still has swimmers
occasionally test positive, probably to the tune of one every year
or two. But in swimming doping was never so widespread or so
brazenly denied as in these examples. It seems not all that
surprising that this occurs in countries where a sports machine is
in place-athletes are not allowed to think of themselves as in
possession of their own bodies. When U.S. athletes engage in
doping, I want to ask two things: Where was your family,
where were your friends or whoever thinks you are more than an
athlete? And where were your training partners and coaches?
Who participated in the conspiracy of silence which allowed you to
do this to yourself?
[10] Instead of decrying that athletes are paid for their work,
or that we shower rewards on those with fantastic athletic prowess,
we should be asking ourselves this: What kind of communities allow
its members to engage in dangerous and self-destructive
behavior? Who is willing to participate in the conspiracy of
silence? Who is willing to let the athlete think there that
her athletic performance represents all of her human
potential?
1 http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/98/0130/nat7.html
2
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37631,00.html?tw=wn_story_related