Where Do We Draw the Line?

by Rupert, The Ghosts of Wayne Fontes

Few things in life are certain: death, taxes, and crap about performance enhancing drugs in the sports media. With the world waiting in limbo for Barry Bonds to slap a couple home runs and break Hank Aaron’s record once and for all, we’re certainly in for a little more nausea in the form of sports writing about the cream, the clear, BALCO, and the epidemic of performance enhancing drugs. Well, this got my wheels spinning a little bit about all of the different drugs, supplements, and other influences that can potentially “enhance performance.”

The debate begins with the NHL in 1998. Michael Farber wrote a somewhat famous/infamous article for SI called "Hockey’s Little Helpers" that got the sports world talking. Farber detailed the use, or so-called abuse, of Sudafed as a performance enhancing supplement. The article raised quite the stink and led to a ban of Sudafed usage by both the NHL and Olympic committee for the Nagano winter Olympics. If I read this article correctly, they even speculated that NHL players were choosing to put natural pseudo-ephedrine up their ass for a little boost. “Players are using various alternatives—including Up Your Gas tablets—that contain the Chinese herb Ma-Huang and are available at health-food stores.” While I can understand that this presents a threat to players' health and may give an unfair advantage to the users of the Sudafed, the question that I raise is if Sudafed is considered a performance enhancing drug, where do we draw the line on all other potentially performance enhancements? After all, Sudafed is legal.

Should Breathe Right strips be banned from competitive sports? These nasal strips allow increased oxygen flow to the brain, affording athletes increased endurance. What about Creatine supplements, Muscle Milk, Hydroxycut, and the countless other products available at any GNC or Vitamin Shoppe? These are actually designed to enhance performance, yet they are still allowed in Olympic competition and professional sports leagues.

What about drinking coffee before a big game? As written by Dr. Gabe Mirkin, M.D., a study from the University of Birmingham in England provides evidence that ingesting caffeine before a workout increases performance and more specifically, endurance.

Studies show that caffeine helps athletes run faster in both short and long-distance races. In short races, it makes athletes faster by causing the brain to send messages along nerves to cause a greater percentage of muscle fibers to contract at the same time. In longer races, it delays fatigue by preserving stored muscle sugar. Muscles get their energy from sugar and fat in the bloodstream, and from sugar, fat and protein stored in the muscles. When muscles run out of their stored sugar, they hurt and become more difficult to coordinate. Caffeine causes muscles to burn more fat, thus sparing stored muscle sugar to delay fatigue.

Moving on, should athletes be forbidden to listen to music before and during competition? You might ask, why would listening to music be considered performance enhancing? Well, I implore you to go to the gym (preferably with a hangover) and try to run on the treadmill. Then, try it again with your favorite song playing loudly. If you can honestly say that it does not affect your performance, then go ahead and bill me the time I have wasted, but I’m not expecting the invoice. Listening to music is actually particularly important to baseball players and extreme sports athletes, but numerous other athletes swear by listening to music as part of their athletic pre-game or bench rituals. Does this mean no Metallica for Mariano Rivera or Led Zeppelin for Shaun White?

By now, you are probably thinking that this is getting ridiculous. Well, you are right. That is my point. Somebody needs to draw the line on this whole debate. Quite simply, if the FDA deems that a substance is harmful or should be considered illicit; then ban it from competition and test for it regularly. Otherwise, let’s just end this nonsense right here. Sports writers will have to think of something else to write about, the league executives can focus on the jobs they were hired to do, and the rest of us can start concentrating on the actual games again. Isn't is about time?