Drug notes

More on sports and performance-enhancing drugs – a topic that prompts Rust interest from time to time.

Firstly, we have received the news that tennis star Maria Sharapova has been given a two-year ban for use of a banned substance – see here –  Owen Gibson writing on the website of – THE GUARDIAN

Secondly, we read that Russian athlete Tatyana Firova has apparently come out publicly and said that athletes should be able to use performance-enhancing drugs just like other ordinary members of the public.

It sounds completely crackers on the face of it, but la Firova’s comment does rather chime with an argument I once made many moons ago that one way of dealing with the ‘drugs in sport’ issue going forward (i.e. one that would remove the need to set up and run complicated and costly drugs-testing programmes and court cases etc.) would be to establish two sets of Olympic Games: one for athletes on performance-enhancing drugs … and one for athletes who were not.

I made the case that, as long as everyone was prepared to operate in conditions of total openness and transparency, I saw few moral problems involved. After all, some people would be more than prepared to pay good money see a human being run a 100 metres race in less than 5 seconds, even if he had to take some form of danger stimulant that would almost certainly kill him within 12 months in order to do it.

See here – THE INDEPENDENT