A couple of issues fascinate me in athletes' drug abuse. No, I'm not surprised that many many athletes are seduced by the glory of victory and success and the consequent monetary rewards. What I find interesting is their willingness to exchange for success with a large risk of premature death.
Another question is: Is victory sweeter if you know you don't deserve it? I am aware of the phenomenon that psychologically, a person is often happier with winning $1000 in gambling or lottery (same thing) than with earning $1000 through work. Free food tastes more delicious than food you buy. We seem to love the concept of "free lunch."
The third thing that fascinates me is the straight face these star athletes keep when questioned about their doping in public. From Lance Armstrong to Floyd Landis, from Marion Jones to Barry Bonds. They are obviously not embarrassed or tormented by shame or guilt. I heard on NPR about a French mountain cyclist who, a year after winning a world championship, confessed his doping and returned the medal to the second place cyclist (I have little confidence in his innocence either) and exposed the rampant doping in the sport. He was ostricized by everyone in the cycling establishment and was a shining example of why cyclists SHOULDN'T expose their dirty little secret.
And the final fascination has to do with the public's tendency to idolize the success of star athletes and their willingness to believe their virtues and innocence. Actually many people probably doesn't care if champion athletes cheat as long as they bring glory to their home countries (and of course athletes from other countries who cheat must go to hell) or their hometown teams.
Source article about Flo-Jo :
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/sports/ ... .html?pn=3
Quotes:
Endurance-boosting drugs like EPO cause the blood to thicken, which has led to the death of more than 20 cyclists. Human growth hormone, which is widely used by strength athletes and some sprinters, can result in enlarged organs and uncontrollable bone growth in the face, feet and hands. Called acromegaly, it is irreversible, crippling, and a killer. According to "The Steroid Bible," "People with excess levels of hGH in their blood rarely live past 60."
The spreading use of hGH may help explain the unusual times by Chinese sprinters and swimmers, women in particular, and even shed some light on another sporting mystery, the extraordinary success and untimely death of Florence Griffith-Joyner. Before she startled world sport with her four-medal, three-gold performance at the 1988 Olympics, obliterating the 100- and 200-meter records, Griffith-Joyner had been a solid but not brilliant sprinter. Her best effort over 100 meters did not rank in the top 40 marks of all time, and her previous best at 200 was not in the all-time top 20. Then came an overnight transformation of physique and performance. FloJo turned up in Seoul looking sleek and muscular. The records she went on to set were so extraordinary, almost superhuman, that even today's best female runner, Marion Jones, would find herself trailing FloJo like a basset to a coyote, by nearly three meters.
Keenly aware of the limitations of the human body, athletes and journalists at the Olympic Village speculated on her redefined body and extraordinary performances. Griffith-Joyner angrily dismissed the allegations and volunteered to take a drug test "anytime, anywhere," but it turned out to be an empty promise. There would be no more tests, no more races. She abruptly retired. Darrell Robinson, FloJo's former training partner and national quarter-mile champion, has publicly stated that shortly before the Seoul Games, she had paid him $2,000 for 10 cubic centimeters of human growth hormone, which would not have been picked up in any drug test. She dismissed Robinson as a "crazy, lying lunatic," but she never took legal action against him, and never raced again. After FloJo died suddenly in September 1998, the coroner's report showed that she suffered from "mild cardiac hypertrophy," an unusually enlarged heart, and "occasional interstitial fibrosis" of the heart muscle.
In the years since her death, the suspicions and circumstantial evidence have grown substantially. In 1987, a huge cache of hGH was stolen from London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, only to turn up that summer in the Santa Monica black market. A few months later, Flo-Jo's training partners began noticing dramatic changes in her appearance and performance. "I am astonished by the way Flo-Jo changed from the slightly overweight, sluggish sprinter I was easily able to beat in training in California," says British hurdler Lorna Boothe. Boothe also claims she met a nurse from a San Fernando Valley hospital that claimed Griffith-Joyner was being regularly injected with a steroid-like compound.
Whether such accusations amount to anything more than professional jealousy is an open question. But many prominent doping experts with no axes to grind have expressed serious suspicions about Griffith-Joyner. German scientist Werner Franke, who is credited with exposing the drug and sports machine that turned the former East Germany into a world athletic powerhouse, says flatly that Griffith-Joyner's seizures, which first occurred in 1996, were "symptomatic of the abuse of anabolic drugs or hGH." Former world champion power lifter Mauro Di Pasquale, who was medical director to the World Wrestling Federation and World Bodybuilding Federation and now holds a similar position with NASCAR, says the details of her heart condition and death are consistent with the side effects of such drugs. Even one of Griffith-Joyner's former physicians, sports specialist Robert Kerr, who treated her for an ankle injury, has weighed in on the scandal. "From the combination of her physical appearance and her increased performance," he says, "I believe she was on drugs."
While FloJo's grotesque death dominated headlines, she was not the only Los Angeles area track star to die under suspicious circumstances or suffer from questionable medical ailments. For more than a decade during the 1980s and '90s, the Santa Monica Track Club, led by Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell -- who have both publicly campaigned against performance-enhancing drugs -- dominated world track. After nine SMTC athletes took home medals at the 1991 World Athletic Championships in Tokyo, doping experts pointedly noted the unusual fact that seven of those medal winners, Lewis most prominently, wore dental braces. Less than 1 percent of the adult population wears braces, but crooked teeth is a common side effect of using hGH. Lewis, who never failed a drug test, now suffers from chronic, degenerative arthritis. The SMTC's coach, Joe Douglas, has denied that any of his athletes used performance-enhancing drugs.