By An Anonymous Writer
August 9 2006

I have just learned of a new book ‘The Death of Marco Pantani’ by Matt Rendell. "The Pirate" as he was known in the peloton was a climber, one of the few who could race up mountains 20-30 miles long, and do it all day long; however he was shamed for using drugs. DRUG CHEAT some would call him.

The use of drugs in sport is illegal, although there are sports that don’t condone it, but turn a blind eye, or just pretend it’s not there. All sport, professional or amateur is about putting bums on seats and this is what has driven drugs into sport, combined with the rewards and egos of the participants. Years ago at an Olympic games the top athletes were asked if there was a tablet that could guarantee a gold medal, but would shorten their life by 20-30 years, would they take it? Guess what, nearly all said ‘give me the tablet’. I don’t actually agree with the use of drugs in this sense, but their ‘cheating’ aspect is very dubious to say the least, and like the rest of you, if the sporting scene played out in front of me is boring, I’m going to turn over the telly or read a book instead next time. Or go out on my bike.

 

Probably the most famous sporting drugs are steroids; there are many forms of Androgenic anabolic steroids to chose from. Just like pain killers, they go from Aspirin to Morphine, and like pain killers if you grabbed Morphine every time you had a headache your health would deteriorate considerably in a short period of time.

 

The reasons steroids are chosen are because of their double impact on the body. Not only do they enable the body to grow at a far faster rate, but they stop the body from going catabolic, i.e. breaking itself down. The Argentinean footballer ‘the hand of god’ Maradona was found using steroids; these had absolutely no affect on his ability or skill, but they would have allowed him to play a domestic season and then compete in other international games (probably not something he needed when he was younger).

 

Marco Pantani, like so many endurance athletes was caught using EPO, a drug that increases a persons red blood cell count - the cells in the blood that carry oxygen -  in a similar way to altitude training. This to me is where the whole cheating thing falls down. If I can afford to swan off and train up a mountain, is that any more cheating than buying a shed load of EPO? The outcome is very similar; except you don’t have to travel as far. The ironic thing is EPO was developed to treat people with respiratory problems such as asthma, but has become more famous for its use as an "illegal" drug in the tour de France.

 

Another grey area for me is the use of substances like creatin. I have used it for my cycling training and it is bloody good. But make sure you drink plenty of water to help your kidneys, and watch your joints. Within 4 weeks my training intensity and development had gone through the roof, and the muscle mass and development greater than any I had experienced in years of training. Like most things though there is a drawback. A walk to the sandwich shop started to get painful for my knees - I presume this was down to my muscles getting stronger at a faster rate than my tendons/ ligaments or bones or a combination of all of them. This was the point I stopped taking it. Guess what? I have never been able to train anywhere near as hard since, nor have I seen gains anywhere near those gained while using Creatin. And creatin is a legal supplement in most if not all sport.

 

In cycle races like the tour de France probably all of the competitors are fed at night by intravenous drip as a way to speed up recovery. Now maybe I’m a bit dumb, but I would be surprised if Jaques Anquitil (sorry if that’s spelt wrong) was fed by drip when he won the tour 5 times. So again how do we define cheating? Is it by having a level playing field for all the competitors? Because if so the news is there never will be one.

 

Most of us will have seen Ben Johnson run the 100metres faster than anybody has ever run it, only he didn’t because he was/is a drug-cheat. My belief is that virtually all top athletes in virtually all sports are using drugs in some way shape or form. It does not surprise me that sports people would do such things. We as people seem to look forward to a substance - alcohol - to help take us from reality, to feel better about ourselves or our life. In the same way that watching the Tykes beat another team is really just our body getting its boost of adrenalin and other feel good hormones.

 

I realise as I write this that I may upset a few people, but this is just my opinion that drugs are far more widely used in high level sport than most of us appreciate, and that what technically is classed as a drug and what is not and therefore legal is a very grey area, and one that will probably never go away. We the consumers of such sports are in part to blame; every single one of us, due to our lust for bigger and faster and better performances. While it is a shame for athletes like Marco Pantani, and many others I believe there is a massive grey area, and I don’t feel that he, or so many like him cheated. Ben Johnson still is the fastest man on the planet. Cheated or not I saw it with my own eyes, and he did cross the line in front of everybody else.

 

Cheating doesn’t come into it, ask Peter Stringer about that Heineken cup final!

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