After a close call last year for 3 whereabout failures or missed tests, for Coleman to allow this to happen again will lead people to believe either you’re doping or you don’t take seriously the anti-doping efforts of the sport. What reason do we have to believe otherwise? https://t.co/B5GOkCucfL
— Michael Johnson (@MJGold) June 17, 2020
So just to be clear, I am not a professional athlete. I don't have a dazzling athletics career like Michael Johnson and I certainly can't claim to run anywhere near a sub 10 second 100m.
But..I am an athletics fan, and have followed athletics avidly my entire life. It fascinates me because I have always respected the sheer excellence of the athletes and how seemingly superhuman they are, knowing that I have throughout my life tried to replicate them and come up magnitudes short.
Watching these guys on TV, you think that what they do is attainable because it doesn't look much different than just a regular person trying to run all out. But remember these people are racing the absolute best of the best. Their peers are chosen and then filtered out from millions of other people trying to do the same. Like with any other sport, there is a genetic propensity that allows certain individuals to excel. Sure, hard work is the cornerstone of every successful athlete, but without the superior genetics? Don't even think about it.
I believed all of the above until recently.
It dawned on me, that while these professional athletes did possess the necessary requisites to be above and beyond your normal fitness fanatic, the superior genes, the superior work ethic etc. They also possessed the drive to win at probably all means necessary. And yes, I mean taking performance enhancing drugs.
It's a touchy subject because even without PED's these athletes are still every bit as impressive and well beyond the reach of any "normal" individual, but time and time again, we have examples of people who reach the top of their game and then later on are found to be drug cheats.
Where do we draw the line?
Testing is a cat and mouse game and people are always finding new ways to pass doping tests.
A lot of the time, athletes are caught years later where more advanced testing methods are used.
But here's the rub.. I think that probably the majority of the top athletes have "cheated" and knowingly used substances that are beyond what you could find "over the counter."
Coleman might have put up the absolute best performance of the pack, but if he was found to be doping, then are we to believe that the rest of the field aren't doping and are only running split second times slower as a result?
I highly doubt that. What infact I think is happening is that the entire field is doping, but Coleman was caught.
Remember, Lance Armstrong was able to get away with it for a decade. Granted he was dominating the sport and was in the limelight both before and after the allegations were found to be true, but are we supposed to believe that everyone else was clean?
Doping is systematic
While I can't prove that everyone at the top level of sports most conducive to doping are actually doping, I now personally believe that certainly in athletics, that it is almost certain that the top athletes in the final heats are all doping. Some are probably taking substances that don't even have a test yet. And while this is a disappointing realisation, that these super-humans are "cheating", I don't see them as being "fraudulent."
My enjoyment of the sport comes from the fact that these people are doing things well beyond that of myself and nearly all of the people in the world. The fact they're using Performance enhancing drugs is almost irrelevant. I know for a fact that if doping wasn't such a stigma and everyone else also took the same concoction of drugs, they still wouldn't be able to compete with these people.
In-fact, I would go as far as saying that probably all of these guys would still be better, faster, stronger than the rest of the population if they were truly natural. Super genetics really does make a big difference.
That all said, I'm not suddenly affirming people's choices to take PED's, nor am I supporting the idea that PEDs should be allowed. I am simply relinquishing the idea that these people are completely natural and at that level, I am going to assume everyone is taking gear.