Belsky starts by asking, “Where do you draw the line where enhancement is acceptable?” Verstegen begins by taking about technology is producing better equipment, better technology and specifically discusses how the swimsuit used by athletes in Beijing allowed swimmers to shatter all kinds of records. The organizing body for international swimmers has decided that they’re prohibiting some of these suits. “They’re taking a big step backwards,” Verstegen says. He notes that swimming was never more popular than it was last summer and that the record-breaking had a lot to do with the public’s embrace of the sport. He also recounts a conversation he had with his 10-year-old daughter who asked, “Does everyone get the same suit? Then it’s fair.”
This is from the report on the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last Saturday. Here’s more:
[Steve] Kerr says that the NBA does a good job of enforcing PEDs [performance enhancing drugs] and that its problem is regulating recreational drugs, a comment that draws a laugh. Players get a letter from the league about six weeks before the season starts telling them, “You’re going to get tested for drugs, including marijuana, on October 1. Remember that the drug stays in your system for 30 days.”
And finally:
Kerr makes an interesting distinction between the public’s willingness to tolerate PEDs in the hallowed game of baseball (“your grandfather’s sports”) and football. “Football is a barbaric sport,” Kerr says. “The public is like, ‘whatever you have to do, go ahead.'”
Belsky: “My grandfather’s sport was running from Cossacks.”
European history might have been played out differently if there were [sic] PED dealers in the shtetl!
READER COMMENTS
wcu0936
Mar 9 2010 at 12:18pm
I do not like to condone anything illegal but just like technology people need to advance also. Just like the baseball players that have been caught using PEDs. They seen these young guy coming in that could possibly take there jobs, thus taking their source of income away. I know they make millions a year but it is no different than if an average person would lose their job.
It seems to me the opportunity cost of not taking PEDs would be much more than taking them. If you take the PEDs you would become the best at your job therefor it would increase your income. If I were in the same situation im not sure if i could turn them down. Isnt America suppose to be free if someone want to take something that is harmful for their bodies, let them. What is up with the swimsuits? That is part of everything in the world, you want the best to increase your ability of your job being it is baseball or swimming.
Kurbla
Mar 9 2010 at 1:32pm
One of the funniest “enhancements” are used in powerlifting, i.e. weightlifting of the three simpler lifts: bench press, squat, deadlift. The powerflifting is more popular in USA than Olympic weightlifting. Powerlifters use elastic “suits” and “shirts” accumulating potential energy, like springs. These shirts are so strong that competitor in bench press must pull the bar on his chests before he lifts, the gravity alone is not enough. Then he lifts, using both his own strength and accumulated energy.
How to put on bench shirt.
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