GRcade

Inspired by reading this quote:

Grumpy David wrote:I look forward to the day we have the freakshow Olympics. Any and all performance enhancing drugs are legal, any Super Speedo swimming kit/clothing is allowed and eventually cybernetic enhancements.

I think that GD has a good point. While at the moment people are cheating (because it is banned), I don't think that drugs should be banned in sport. I would love to see how fast the 100m could be done if there were no restrictions on hoe athletes prepare!

If they were being run at the same time, would you watch the unenhanced 9 second 100m final or the drugged up 7 second 100m final?

If athletes wanna dope up then let them, just have a separate category where the roided up freaks can compete amongst themselves. Initially I doubt major sponsors would want to be associated with them but they could get the drug companies on board and show just how far they can push the human body.

let in all the drugs and call it the super Olympics

or better yet, its pro athletes not on drugs vs. regular person on drugs

The amount of pro-wrestlers that die young are a clear indication that drugs in sports are a bad idea... and don't give me that "wrestling is fake" shite either.

Wrestling is fake and all the deaths are faked. Brett Hart is laughing it up on an island somewhere with Eddie Guerrero.

As for the poll, no keep it clean because

I think a super olympics would be an interesting spectacle, though with my sensible and critical mind engaged I think it would be a way to ensure that many young and promising athletes will end up dying younger than they should or living significantly impaired in their later lives.

Whilst juicing the HGH and various anabolics would doubtlessly result in a 5 second 100 meters from a man with the heart of an ox and the legs of a cheetah, I expect that the usual side effects of such drug abuse would still apply and he'd end up a very unwell or very dead former champion.

Consider as well the 'also-rans' who win nothing but still ruin their bodies in the pursuit of victory. With a particulary bleak future tint on it its not difficult to imagine a future where potential greats in the 'pure' olympics are tempted by the possibility of physical ascension and end up wasting potential to succeed in either. Imagine young lads just starting in the gyms abusing steroids and growth hormones and various doping methods because the worlds fastest man does (publicly rather than privately at least).

this already happens in powerlifting - the 'un-tested' federations and drug-tested.

for what it's worth it's hard to say ban ALL performance enhancing drugs as there a lot of chemicals that can enhance performance. e.g. caffeine is still allowed and that has very good performance enhancement in endurance events like cycling.

just have to draw a line in the sand although that's quite arbitrary.

I think the general rule they use is that these performance enhancers are largely harmful, whereas a protein shake or pro plus aint too bad for you. But yeah, as you say, mostly arbitrary.

Preezy wrote:Wrestling is fake and all the deaths are faked. Brett Hart is laughing it up on an island somewhere with Eddie Guerrero.

As for the poll, no keep it clean because

Bret Hart is alive and well it's Owen that died and that wasn't drug related a stunt went wrong. That would be a cool conspiracy theory though

Falsey wrote:I think the general rule they use is that these performance enhancers are largely harmful, whereas a protein shake or pro plus aint too bad for you. But yeah, as you say, mostly arbitrary.

interesting story from a German pro-bodybuilder (can't find the story so take this with a pinch) was that his bodybuilder friend died of liver failure... from ibuprofen abuse.

Not really all that surprising. Most non-organic chemicals that we add to our bodies do more harm than good over time.

They specifically warn you on the boxes of painkillers not to overdo it because they will strawberry float you up.

People who want a superdrug Olympics I assume are being wilfully dense for comedic purposes. Yes it would be amazing to see someone run 100m in 7 seconds or long jump 15m or throw a javelin out a stadium but that clearly wouldn't happen. You'd possibly see minor improvements in a bunch of events which would be massively underwhelming when the health impacts are considered.

The ibuprofen death isn't surprising at all, the amount of yearly deaths down to even paracetamol is absolutely crazy.

For drugs in sport just look at the current state of professional bodybuilding. Proper freak show monsters are the only ones who even get on stage nowadays. Crazy, crazy bodies; gone way beyond what someone like Arnie was rocking in his prime with more basic anabolics.

No, because then who reacts best to performance enhancing drugs is a key factor in who wins, it all becomes a bit fake. Not to mention the health effects.

Captain Kinopio wrote:People who want a superdrug Olympics I assume are being wilfully dense for comedic purposes. Yes it would be amazing to see someone run 100m in 7 seconds or long jump 15m or throw a javelin out a stadium but that clearly wouldn't happen. You'd possibly see minor improvements in a bunch of events which would be massively underwhelming when the health impacts are considered.

I wouldn't understand the appeal either, goes beyond the basic notion of a competition between athletes/nations to one between drug companies. I don't think there'd be as much intrigue to a medal table topped by GSK and Pfizer as there would an ordinary medal tally (Russia's catching up etc.).

There's obviously a fine line that's been stretched and encroached upon for years now in terms of where training and equipment steps over into unnatural enhancement, but I don't see why that should mean everything becomes a full on circus brimming with freaks to ogle.

Drugs which are proven safe long-term should be allowed in the Olympics (as e.g. caffeine already is). Diet is already a big part of an athlete's training and disallowing one harmless chemical because it comes in tablet form but allowing another because it's part of an apple is totally irrational - particularly when many of these compounds do technically occur in nature in some form or another.

An interesting parallel is in mental performance. Modafinil and amphetamine were both recently proven safe for healthy people to use in small doses to enhance their cognitive abilities. I hope in the coming years / decades as more truly safe 'smart drugs' are discovered eventually they are available over-the-counter like e.g. Pro Plus is.

Drugs which strawberry float you up later in life are a different story and these shouldn't be allowed for the reasons Falsey articulated above.

Snowcannon wrote:No, because then who reacts best to performance enhancing drugs is a key factor in who wins, it all becomes a bit fake. Not to mention the health effects.

This, the whole idea of athletics/sport is supposed to be about natural skill, fitness and training and not who can get the most roided up.

Funnily enough, one of medical science's best-kept and most awkward secrets is that nicotine is a very potent cognitive enhancer.

It goes without saying that smoking is a really stupid idea, but if you think you need to be just a little bit smarter and more alert - e.g. for an exam - then chewing some nicotine gum beforehand isn't a terrible idea.

Long-term use will lower your cognitive baseline, though (so if you've been smoking all your life you're probably stupider than you could have been).

Ironhide wrote:

Snowcannon wrote:No, because then who reacts best to performance enhancing drugs is a key factor in who wins, it all becomes a bit fake. Not to mention the health effects.

This, the whole idea of athletics/sport is supposed to be about natural skill, fitness and training and not who can get the most roided up.

But do people not get advantages over the others if they have the best dietitian, trainer, sports equipment etc. A cyclist would have an advantage over others for instance if he had a better bike, a runner might have a better trainer than others or a footballer might have benefited from expensive coaching from a very young age.

Why not allow people to catch up with the others by use of a little chemical enhancement?