Doping: Legalization and Freedom

We've all had in our childhood and early youth he wanted to be a yesterday morning, a past halfway between the I and I can not. An epic unfinished. A BRAC Ulysses achieve? Taca that never arrives. Belong to a generation of fallen heroes. Thousands of apples consumed around. A real elephant graveyard. Among all these stories, it might be Marion Jones of the most soul pustules on the rise. Had it all. A brazen young, dazzling charisma, painfully bright future, a firm step, and benefit under the media, an incorruptible beauty of simplicity. A whole string of great things. And so, as the passenger pigeon flying up first and then proceed to their destination, was rising up on itself in hectometer hectometer fly towards glory.

With only fifteen years while millions of young people fighting to compete in a national circuit, won a brand that was among the twenty most outstanding in the world. As walls of Jericho fell at the sound of trumpets, Marion Jones watched the steel walls of the chronometer were succumbing to its passage through magic. Athens, Seville, Sydney, Edmonton. Seeing her climb to mourn with joy medal podium with his neck as he sounded a mighty hymn of the United States that we are all Americans for a few seconds ago, no doubt chilled breath, but still made us fall on his knees before he was drawing on tartan silhouette of a living legend. No one in many years thereby silenced a stage of forty thousand souls with their presence. No one captured so many flashes on the starting blocks. No blood froze for just over ten seconds as she did. And no one crossed the finish line with a smile like yours redeeming defeat their adversaries. A smile from 2003 would become death rattle.

It was his coach Trevor Graham who sent a syringe containing a previously unknown steroid Anti-Doping Agency to the United States. While it was known that it was a dubbed designer drug THG, synthesized specifically to not be detected in doping controls. Had fallen shortly before her husband, shot putter CJ Hunter, the mole Bovidae and cocky rather than any mother would want for her vestal. But the Queen of Ebon suspicion began after the scandal of her husband. Months later divorced to make way for a new relationship with the sprinter Tim Montgomery. But gradually been emerging in the shadows of an underworld that Jones to undergo condemn the particular punishment of Sisyphus. The BALCO scandal took shape. Victor Conte, the Supreme Creator of the trap, declaimed in a television program which was already an open secret: Marion Jones was on the blacklist of athletes who had used THG. Thus, the Goddess of Speed ​​once salmon changed tracks by Grey Labyrinth of busybody. A maze in which you furtive darts fell from the four cardinal points.

So, was forced to take the club with their hands to destroy herself her own golden statue. In late 2007 he sang publicly Mea Culpa. The five medals won at the Sydney Olympics and contemplate only in snapshots hanging on the walls of his room. But there was still the worst.

At the time of her death the winter of 2007, filtered through his gut and his heart the sadness of an autumn more charcoal than ever. She was sentenced to six months in prison and two years probation, changing the endless hours of training for 800 hours of community service. "I ask for your compassion as a human being who I am", said through tears at the gates of the Court in an agony of helplessness. To no avail. And holy burial took a Legend.

All around, as many gladiators were put to the gallows her husband Tim Montgomery, Antonio Pettigrew, Gatlin, Jerome Young and Alvin Harrison, all advanced students of Trevor Graham. But the same tsunami shook the HSI team led by John Smith, who coached the glories of the level of Mo Greene and Ato Boldon. While some stars were leaving on time and escape the plague, as many as a fifth column of HSI Torri Edwards, Larry Wade, Kelly White and Christie Gaines were publicly shot through serving his sentence. It is, all of it, the ember, still smoldering embers of a lost generation. I saw her grow. I saw her die. With it was athletics.

But not everything is in California or end in the track. History of sport in different cases identical oozes space and time. Linford Christie, Marco Pantani, Dwain Chambers, Martina Hingis, Ben Johnson, Johann Mühlegg, Paquillo, Alberto Garcia and an endless string currently sentenced to a metal ring in the shape of Lance Armstrong. Anyone could say that data in hand, all the elite Olympic sooner or later ends up being in the shadow of a more than justified suspicion. The IOC, UN something like sports and therefore endlessly politically correct, lunges for the jugular of doping with the noble intention of sweeping the red carpet for anyone to encounter the thorns of doping. The main reason given is their trite litany is at the base of the youngest children. These innocent creatures are mimetic with religious fervor and passion as an altar boy all those heroes who can run faster, jump higher or hit harder. A crumbling idolatry as totems ending eaten by termites. So, the disappointment is the metaphysics of those who drink of the elite of the sport.

Young and old.

But the hypocrisy that tarnishes the IOC and all the stripe sport bureaucrats shame. The convenience of avoiding the problem instead of grabbing him by the horns. The first thing you do want to give up his heroin addiction is recognizing the problem. Also involved agencies should recognize the problem of doping is not as isolated from a few cheaters, but as something more homogeneous. As he drives away flies, shake doping cases that stain the image of the top sport Arrimo large mafias and athletes who, although aware of playing cat and mouse, take this risk in exchange for the Gloria. Furthermore, of the play to stand in it, most likely live to the end of his days bathed in glitter through contracts with sports brands, advertising, television programs, seminars and a whole springs of resources that can ensure the most lavish life . Who does not want to bite like forbidden fruit? And worse: Overrides the work and sacrifice made by these athletes as children simply because of being caught in a drug test? Is it really a lie to others or to themselves by not being able to face the sun and with full guarantees they want?

Different fates of athletes from the former Soviet Union and East Germany. About 10,000 athletes were subjected to institutionalized doping program in which they were forced to take drugs in quantities steroid Ben Johnson tripled. Wall Caído Berlin many enjoyed these athletes them freedom then was alien practices denouncing by conducted to achieve State to overshadow U.S. demonstrate their struggle model supposed superiority communist. Many of these athletes came to ask his world records were set aside, as is the case of Ines Geipel. Others, such as Heidi Krieger, paid a higher price. Today Andreas Kriegel called because of the amount of male hormones that made you eat without any evidence of it. The same fate befell the Soviet Union and later Russia, who then still tumbling in each of the Olympic events in which it operates. The Russians did not know what it is to lead an Olympic medal since. Moreover, still losing after Olympics Olympic medals, to the point of losing no more and no less than 20 medals in Beijing regarding the conduct of Athens.

And with doping in the making.

A politicized and forced doping which these poor lambs were museums in government service that has nothing to do with doping conducted by the U.S. athletes, for example-that act based on their own individual freedom. A doping in order to account, there is whatever your choice. And, above all, a doping is much more present than the cameras end up pointing. In this case, the thief-that is, the lab goes a step ahead of the police anti-doping agencies. Quite possibly, the first pass through the station door without raising the slightest suspicion. So, what is the line between dark and that other doping doping athletes practice all the power base of all kinds, sometimes eventually end up coming in future lists of banned substances? Do not use all athletes to more or less elaborate farthing? Override ¿that the work done to door to exhaustion? All ingested substances that enhance athlete performance and capability to take the training, whether chemical or non-legal, or such other natural misnamed.

Or is that chemical processes are identical the one and the others? Is everything chemical is bad and everything natural is good? Héctor Abad As noted in a newspaper article entitled Legalizing doping, we have the case of hematocrit. Where is the difference between artificial and natural? 'It is desirable that an athlete has a high percentage of red blood cells because they are the ones that carry oxygen from the lungs to the muscles and oxygen is the fuel the body. At the same time, it is also good to have a blood thin to prevent thrombosis. There is a natural way to increase the hematocrit: living in the mountains. If you're going to live for six months above 3,000 meters, in the wilderness of the Andes, just with a hematocrit greater than 50% when the normal sea level is 40%. The same effect that comes from living at high altitude can be achieved by injecting a hormone EPO. The method of removal is permitted, the chemical method, no, not that of autologous blood, but this decision is capricious. " Are you pursuing chemical or creating situations of inequality?

Perhaps the line is more diffuse than it seems. That is why for the journals Nature and The Lancet, two of the most important scientific journals, is preferable to legalize doping and medical care open to all athletes to prevent real risks. They also came to doubt the effectiveness of anti-doping test and the real damage it does to athletes.

The Austrian economist Mises and described the effects of the intervention prohibitive in any field of public life. This new interventions end up being future, rather than eradicate the problem, end up fatter. On the issue of doping, as in the drug, increase the gangs that traffic in illegal substances synthesized in laboratories outside the health criteria required minimum. That's where part of the problem lies. However, huge amounts of money going down the drain doping programs and controls that do not detect drugs not yet recognized, as happened a long time with the THG. Going even further, provide a more equal footing assisted programs of doping and according to medical criteria. He was no longer a struggle of good and bad. Would be equal to itself would prevail and genuine transparency in the court fight face to face. An equality that, even with the pipe dream that no one dopara would not exist because they are not the same biological conditions of a runner that an Ethiopian in the Salamanca district of Madrid. Logic squared.

On the other hand, the IOC itself runs into his good intentions, that it remain. According to the Olympic body, are three reasons why doping has to be fought: doping is against the ethics of sport doping is detrimental to the health of athletes and, finally, doping breaks the principle of equality of opportunities. Stop and think. ¿Ethics of sport? Do not cheat? Although it is a truism to the cube, the athlete is cheating because doping is illegal, if it ceased to be, they are not cross out the cheats and the ethics of sport would stop a lot better than leaving these clandestine activities. ¿Harmful to the health of athletes? The top sport is harmful in itself. The wear to which athletes are subjected to quite often ends up spending bill. But even so, we are in business as usual: intervention. What the IOC has to worry about my health more than myself? It is not serious. Third, is it breaks the principle of equal opportunities? That point directly is a joke. I think it's a difference of degree and not quality that only the tip of the iceberg of the elite sports enjoyment of bespoke shoes, suits integral to the swimming, bicycles developed with new lighter materials and even medical equipment are advanced.

Is it not doubly uneven and unfair that a 100-meter runner from the United States can train according to the model of universities around unconcerned while in Spain an athlete can only aspire to it getting a scholarship from the Federation - are awarded according to results already established, and of living with one foot on each side of the knife? Not to mention the facilities and equipment. And continuing the circle is not more uneven the privileged position of the United States on Sri Lanka athletes? Those disadvantages come to any of the places that want to reach, since there is only from the basis that the sport is uneven in both possibilities, means and results. I insist that you ask the Sri Lankan sprinter falls into the first qualifying round if you have reached the Olympic Games in conditions of real equality of opportunity.

Finally, as a victim of vulgar demagoguery and idle bureaucrats benefit in the real sport, I have to say is even more disappointment for each of those children who claim to defend the fact of seeing their icons fall as pawns an empty box to the condemnation of eternal oblivion, rather than see them compete on equal terms. Is it intellectually and morally healthier sing in my ear that the Magi there until they reach thirty? That and no other is the hypocrisy with which wind and water snakes the IOC and other relevant agencies for not getting into flour humbug forgetting that, sooner or later cause more harm to those who claim to protect. I attest.

Héctor Abad ended his article with an argument worthy of collecting fetish: "In any case, they say, many drugs that you take a mediocre athlete never get the results of a large one. Doping is not what makes Phelps an extraordinary athlete, is a mixture of genes that favor it with an iron discipline that they have trained five hours a day for the past 15 years. Although perhaps not the discipline is one merit: it may come also written in our genes'