Presumably all the people who actually wanted to see a sporting event - the spectators, sponsors, organisers, etc.Originally Posted by davidrodway
Athletes taking drugs are cheating to gain status and money, while supposedly also being some kind of role model.
You appear to be confusing someone having measurable traces of a substance in their system to that person being as high as a kite.
If there was competent management, someone being unable to do their job properly should be noticed, whether that is down to intoxication, idleness or incompetence.
If there wasn't competent management, then whether someone had had a joint the previous night/weekend/month/holiday really isn't what anyone [with any sense] should be worrying about.
Agreed! Same points I was making... but stated rather more elegantly!
Drugs (or alcohol) outside of sport is a totally different debate. Of course, no-one wants their pilot or Surgeon to be drunk. We should surely continue to resist performance enhancing drugs in sport too, for different, but still important, reasons.
True, but given two surgeons, one who never drank, and one who always downed a couple of double whiskies before operating, I'd go for the one with the best record, even if I might also wonder whether the whisky-drinker might be better if they didn't drink.
If you withdraw benefits from an unemployed person because they are on drugs, what do you think will happen to them? Is the result likely to benefit society?
I confess I didn't realise that this was intended as a joke. The idea has been put forward in all seriousness in the past, none other than Charlie Francis
After all cheating is the attempt to gain an advantage not available to your competitors. If drugs were legal then it wouldn't be cheating. The worry of course is that competitors dosed with experimental cocktails of performance enhancing drugs would soon encounter unforeseen side effects, or worse accept long term side effects under the pressure for short term success. Balanced against this is the accusation that drug use is already rampant and that the technologies to evade testing may be more harmful than the options that would be available if drugs were deregulated.
Already there is a dual standard. Tiger Woods has had laser eye surgery and now has 20 30 vision. There is no doubt that his enhanced vision gives him a competitive advantage yet as a surgical technique it is accepted whereas a drug that had the same risks and rewards would be banned.
I'd consider the possibility that were two classes of athletics.
One for those who compete with (pretty much) what nature gave them. The same heavy restrictions and enforcement that we see today. A level playing field.
The other with all the advantages sport scientists could give them alongside the risks of experimenting with such cutting edge innovations. Here the athlete is just a part of the equation. The team behind that athlete is just a big a part of their success.
When I wonder which code would attract the viewer and sponsor I just have to compare formula 1 with GP2. You can see where I'm going with this analogy.
I imagine that just as with F1 the competitors would choose to self regulate safety. Certain of the most risky stratgies would be banned by mutual consent but if someone want to availthemselves of pharmacology to provide a bigger spectacle I say bring on the gladiators.
OK maybe I'm being devils advocate but where's the flaw?
I'm not sure how much public acclaim/media coverage (and consequent sponsorship $$$) there'd be for the 'drugged-up Olympics' compared to a [supposedly] drug-free one, even if in the latter a large element of success was still down to genetic luck, as well as skill and effort in training.
20/20 isn't perfect vision, it's normal, good-enough-not-to-need-glasses vision. Many people have much better than 20/20 vision naturally, and others achieve that via corrective glasses.
Also, better than 20/20 vision has a smaller second number, not a larger one.
I don't think that Formula 1 is a good analogy, because it has become steadily safer for the drivers. The cars are now so well-designed to protect them that it's become routine for drivers to walk away from the most horrendous high-speed crashes. Athletes using drugs would conversely be risking their own health.
Having said that. I reluctantly have to admit that there would probably be much public fascination in seeing drugged-up athletes, if only for the prospect of seeing them drop dead on the track. A better analogy is probably with gladiators - of the ancient Roman sort, rather than the TV series!
The flaw in the analogy is that F1 and Gp2 is mainly technology with human input. A co-operation between man and machine. Even within this there are rules and restrictions to try to level the playing field.
The idea of human athletic sport is to push the human body to peak fitness. Peak health. The science is used only to discover how best to achieve that. Granted there are grey areas ... spiked running shoes and those new fangled swim suits for example. But the principal stands.
Agree on both points. A "drugged up games" would be a freak show in no way about "health" or "fitness". Entertaining, yes. But a bad idea!
Fair enough it's speculation which code would be more popular. I can't claim to be certain either. Do you not feel that my analogy to GP2 vs F1 bears out?
I shall have to double check that then. I was under the impression that 20 20 meant that you could read the bottom line of the eyechart (labelled 20) from 20 feet away and that 20 30 meant you could read it from 30 feet.20/20 isn't perfect vision, it's normal, good-enough-not-to-need-glasses vision. Many people have much better than 20/20 vision naturally, and others achieve that via corrective glasses.
Also, better than 20/20 vision has a smaller second number, not a larger one.
I didn't mean to imply that this surgically enhanced vision was in any way superhuman, merely above average. Whilst other may obtain the same advantage though lucky genes or lenses, if there were a drug that did the same it would be barred from competition.
Not really, since that's really just a case of more or less money/technology being thrown at the problem of going fast - they're all people driving cars.
Not sure about that - if surgery and prosthetics are allowed to cure/treat/improve a condition, I can't see drugs being banned there.
Many Cold/Flu remedies are banned substances as are various dietary supplements.
I recognise what you're saying about driver safety. However historically teh safetly regulation have not bee prescribed from above but have been demanded by the drivers. You'll see that I did speculate that "the competitors would choose to self regulate safety. Certain of the most risky stratgies would be banned by mutual consent."
I guess it's an example of how anarchy quickly evolves into something like contract libertarianism or anarchocapitalism.
But colds and flu are transient conditions, if significant enough to justify taking a palliative remedy would likely stop someone competing anyway, and the 'remedies' aren't really medical treatments, more things to make people feel better.
The reason they are banned isn't because they are taken as cold/flu remedies, but because they contain stimulants.
If there was a drug treatment for poor eyesight which was also performance-enhancing in other ways, likely it would be restricted.
I can see that the appeal of athletic sport to you is to push the body to peak fitness/health. These concepts of fitness and health are obviously incompatible with the sort of technologies we're talking about here.
Yet no-one is saying we should abolish that sort of competitition. The suggestion is to introduce a competivie code where the appeal is less about a historical conception of of physical fitness and more about pushing the biological machine that is the human body as far as it will go. Perhaps not something that appeals to you but nevertheless an intriguing possibiliy for an increasingly post human world.
Please elaborate further on why it's a bad idea.
With motor racing, surely almost all the risks are pretty immediate ones - you either crash in a race or you don't, and the extent of your injuries depends in a relatively understandable way on the various safety features?
With drugs, athletes might easily not know exactly what they were taking, and would be relying on someone else to tell them what the risks were, even if drugs were constantly changing and long-term effects weren't fully understood.
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