Drug Use in Sports
My reading for the week was a book called the "speed trap" by charlie francis. He was Ben Johnson's coach when he broke the 100m world record (easily) in 1988. Its a very frank kind of auto-biography about how he (francis) became a track and field coach and how he helped his athletes from teenagers to world class sprinters. its called the "Speed trap" because it depicts how inconsistency and internal politics mess up the drug testing of world class atheletics.
The most "open" parts about the book were his thoughts on drug use in the top levels of world sports. How a large proportion of atheltes are on some kind of performance enhancing substance, and how unfair it is that in some countries, the olympic qualifying mark to make the national team is higher than ANYBODY has ever reached while drug free...thus forcing atheltes to use drugs even to make the national team. YET the same country has a 4 year ban for getting caught!
Personally, drugs are not something I have alot of experience with. I do recognise that at the top levels they are necessary to win, but I am against kids taking them to "look huge" when in reality they know nothing about training or eating well. Of course you will get large and muscular, drugs almost guarantee that. Any old training program will work, any old eating habits are likely to work as well.
My concern is what happens after they come off the drugs... since they knew nothing before drugs, and got results inspite of their training and diet, when they come off the drugs, they will still know nothing and they will regress rapidly. That would be a waste!
posted by Coach Jonathan Wong @ 1/09/2007 11:51:00 AM
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