There's a congressional inquiry into one guy taking drugs in sport?
Or is it part of a broader inquiry?
It's simple: athletes take drugs because they expect it'll help them win. Winning is vitally important to them because,
- sport is their career, and everyone likes to do well in their career
- they are in the public eye to an enormous extent, and if they do well get praise and love letters, if they do badly get abuse and hate mail
- often there are quite literally millions of dollars involved, which would tempt anyone to dishonesty
It's not really very complicated, and is usually dealt with by various national sports bodies having a little burst of testing and activity until the next way of avoiding tests with tricks and new drugs is discovered.
Its a broader inquiry, brought on in part because the controlling body of Baseball has, over the last decade or so, visibly failed to curb, or attempt to curb the 'abuse' of performance drugs.
I find the entire thing laughable, actually. To move away from the drugs thing:
Lets say that cleats on your shoes allow you to run faster on the field due to greater traction. You are a fool to not put cleats on your shoes if they are allowed. ( they are not currently, I think...)
A pitcher who puts resin or tar on his hands has more control over the ball's curve, thus making his pitches harder to hit. You'd be a fool not to tar your hands (as they do in, say, gymnastics...though that may have more to do with preventing blisters). Now I KNOW tarring your hands is illegal. It supposedly gives an unfair advantage to the team who's pitcher uses it.
Of course, we are to understand that just about every pitcher in the professional levels of the game does something equivilent to tarring their hands (nail files to the balls, etc)... and if everyone is doing it, how does anyone have an advantage?
Where, exactly is the line drawn? Should we disbarr exceptionally tall players as having an advantage over shorter ones? What about the guy that bones his bat vs the guy that doesn't? How about the guy who wears brand X shoes because they feel better on his feet?
I read about a speed cyclist who had to fire the guy who painted his bike because the guy used one gram too little primer on the bike. One gram. He WANTED to have that one less gram, but it was 'illegal' to bike with too little primer, as that one gram provided an unfair advantage, though the innovative solid disc brakes he used (at the time) were an advantage that was legal because no one had ruled on it.
What, exactly, was stopping the other cyclists from reducing THEIR primer one gram, if they chose?
So too it goes with 'performance drugs'... not least of which is 'Blood Banking' in endurance sports, a practice that is fully legal outside of competion sports, if a little ghoulish. If you truly want a level playing feild, stop introducing arbitrary limits that players are going to try and overcome anyway. What if the 'blood banking' is only done during the training period and not in the competition? Do we ban it then too? Then can't we say that 'four hours is too much training." and restrict athletes to three? Enforce mediocraty in what should be the extreme examples of human endeavor?
Bah.