World Records and Doping Suspicions
Posted June 10th, 2008 at 10:00 AM by Jesse Squire
Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Drugs In Sports
We get a fantastic world record in the 100 meters, and one of the first questions is about drugs. From the New York Times:
When Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a world record of 9.72 seconds at 100 meters Saturday night, two questions became urgent:
Was the supporting tailwind legal?
Was Bolt himself legal?
Track and field has become so compromised by doping that any startling performance brings immediate suspicion. Even before the race at the Reebok Grand Prix meet on Randall’s Island, Bolt and his top challenger, the 2007 world champion Tyson Gay, faced inevitable questions from reporters about performance-enhancing drugs. The pre-race inquiries have become as routine as the postrace drug screens.
The purists and the pollyannas alike bemoan this state of affairs. And while the comedians and cartoonists have (rightly) turned their doping jokes towards baseball instead of track, they still don’t get the same treatment. Manny Ramirez smacked his 500th career home run this week and did not have to answer these kind of questions.
Will track ever be rid of this suspicion? I say not any time soon, and maybe never.
My mother was fond of telling me that you reap what you sow. It’s one of the central things you must accept if you are an endurance athlete; on race day your work (or lack of it) will be easy to see. It’s also great advice for any other endeavor, and it applies to this issue.
You see, doping in track & field was only nominally against the rules until the early 90s. It was so easy to get away with it back then that many insiders were shocked by the Ben Johnson ordeal not because he was using steroids but because he got caught. The Communists had official state doping programs, the USOC covered up positive tests, and top meet promoter Andy Norman helped athletes avoid tests. IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch was accused of covering up tests.
Only when WADA was created and bulldog Dick Pound headed it did the anti-doping efforts get serious. And to be honest, the best weapon in the fight is not WADA or even Dr. Don Caitlin but law enforcement. Without it, “BALCO” and “Victor Conte” would be unknown terms. Since the real anti-doping effort isn’t even ten years old, the fruits of 30+ years of complicity are ripening. Frank Serpico said nothing would change as long as the good cops are afraid of the bad cops instead of the other way around. For a long time the clean athletes felt they were at a competitive disadvantage and feared the sport’s leadership. This all may be changing now, but it will be a long time before the public can see it.
Another reason the doping question was raised so quickly was the caliber of the performance. Bolt’s time of 9.72 was a tremendous run and he put together a brilliant race. He also got extremely lucky. His tailwind of 1.8 m/s was just under the allowable limit of 2.0. He ran on a track that has produced some very good sprint times; a year ago Gay’s ran 9.76, aided by a wind just 0.1 m/s over the limit. He also got perfect weather.
Dr. Jonas Mureika, a physics professor at Loyola Mariemont University, has studied the effects of various environmental factors on sprinting as much as anyone. He has a nifty online calculator that can factor in wind speed, elevation, temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity. I don’t have the specific numbers, but the thunderstorm that hit right before the race gave the athletes low air pressure and high humidity, each of which are highly advantageous. Back in 1991, Carl Lewis and Mike Powell used the same kind of weather to produce the greatest series of long jump marks ever seen. Mureika’s research suggests that under more normal circumstances, Bolt might have run in the low 9.80s—a result that wouldn’t have mainstream sports journalists’ tongues wagging.
It will also be hard to nail down the doping question for the same reasons track fans love track. Drugs work, and they work better in our sport than in any other. Track & field tests raw physical abilities like speed, strength, power and endurance in their most basic form. Skill is important, but skill alone will not make up for a lack of physical attributes. The simplistic beauty of the 100 meters attracts the possibility of the ugliness of doping.
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Tags: 100 meters, andalls island, doping, drugs in sport, legal, New York Times, ny times, performance enhancing drugs, record setting performance, Reebok Grand Prix, sprints, Usain Bolt, world records
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The Final Sprint
Good article. I wanted to point out though that I don’t think 100M runners would be considered “endurance” athletes. :)
June 10th, 2008 at 5:02 pm