SportsLetter

Leave a beautiful corpse?

SportsLetter, over the years, has observed the persistence of journalists’ infatuation with the so-called Goldman surveys on drug use by elite athletes.  Year after year as journalists write about performance enhancing drug use at any level from the Olympic Games to high school sports, sooner or later someone will drag out Bob Goldman’s old surveys from the 1980s and early 1990s, present them as if they were scientific studies and then suggest that most elite athletes are dying to win through doping. 

It happened again in a December 20, 2010 New York Times blog by Gretchen Reynolds who wrote, “There’s a well-known survey in sports, known as the Goldman Dilemma. For it, a researcher, Bob Goldman, began asking elite athletes in the 1980s whether they would take a drug that guaranteed them a gold medal but would also kill them within five years. More than half of the athletes said yes. When he repeated the survey biannually for the next decade, the results were always the same. About half of the athletes were quite ready to take the bargain.”

What’s wrong with this?  Well, several things are.  As SportsLetter wrote a decade ago after contacting Goldman about his research, the findings came from the informal questioning of athletes with whom Goldman came in contact.  Subsequent surveys involved smaller samples than the first one.  The Goldman surveys did not employ accepted statistical sampling practices.  The findings were not peer reviewed, nor were they ever published in a scientific journal. 

SportsLetter also noted that the work of Penn State’s Charles Yesalis, who himself has questioned athletes about the risks of doping and authored several works about anabolic steroids, cast doubt on the Goldman findings.

But, even if the sampling and vetting of the Goldman surveys met the highest scientific standards, the fundamental premise would still be flawed because no athlete interviewed by Goldman really believed that he or she would be dead within five years.  This is a hypothetical question, a fantasy question.  None of the athletes was confronting the certainty of death in the near future.  There may have been a lot of bravado among those whom Goldman questioned, but none of them was entering into a genuine bargain that guaranteed death.

Let’s say that 20 gold-medal winners from the 2006 Torino Olympic dropped dead tomorrow, and it could be publically and conclusively proven that their deaths resulted from bargain they all made in 2005 to take drugs, win medals and die young.  Now imagine that a Tony Soprano-like character approaches a new group of elite athletes and offers them the same bargain with the ironclad promise that the death clause will be strictly enforced.  Think you’d get a 50%-plus positive response?  SportsLetter would bet the farm that you would not.

Illinois High School Association and PED testing

On April 21 the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) released the following announcement:

The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) became one of three state high school associations in the country to test for performance-enhancing drugs with the implementation of the IHSA Performance-Enhancing Drug Testing Program earlier this school year.

IHSA Assistant Executive Director Kurt Gibson, who oversees the program, presented the IHSA Board of Directors with an update on the results of the winter sports testing at the Board’s regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, April 21, 2009.

Gibson reported that 178 athletes were tested in five sports (bowling, basketball, wrestling, swimming, competitive cheer) during the winter, representing 26 percent of the total number of tests that will be conducted during the school year. All 178 students were tested for stimulants, while 88 of those students were also tested for anabolic steroids. 177 of the 178 students came back with negative results, while the one student who tested positive was granted a medical exemption.

Overall, 442 students have been tested this school year, representing 66 percent of all testing that will be conducted. 334 students have been tested for stimulants, while 196 students were tested for anabolic steroids. The seven students who tested positive in the fall and winter were granted medical exceptions for this year. For reporting purposes, these results are considered positive, even though no penalty was assessed to any individual or school.

“Our membership has done a tremendous job in implementing our drug testing program this year,” said Gibson. “Their support for and cooperation with this initiative has enabled this first year to run smoothly. Based on the positive feedback from our schools and testing results, we believe that our testing program is successfully serving as a deterrent for student-athletes in Illinois.”

Impact of PEDs on track and field

Doug Logan, the CEO of USA Track & Field, doesn’t come from the low-profile school of sports administration.  Logan, who made headlines last year when he wrote to President Bush urging him not to pardon former track star Marion Jones, has written a strongly worded piece on the impact of performance enhancing drugs on track and field and the role the supplement industry plays.  He says, “Performance-Enhancing Drugs are threatening to choke the life out of the sport that I serve and love. And in many ways, the supplement industry has been assisting in braiding the noose.”  Logan blames unregulated substances containing traces of banned and/or dangerous substances for positive tests and even deaths. He goes on to blame “powerful Inside-the-Beltway friends such as Senator Orin Hatch.” If you coach kids who rely on supplements, this is worth reading.

Michael Phelps and The Children

With the Super Bowl completed, sportswriters have had time to turn their attention to the Michael Phelps story.  Commentary and framing of the story has run the gamut from “It’s not a big deal” (Tanku Varadarajan and Sally Jenkins) to “It is a big deal and he should be punished” (Michael Wilbon) to “He’s getting off easy ’cuz he’s white” (Dave Hyde).  Predictably, a number of writers and sources have alluded to the impact of the bong episode on “young people,” and more specifically young swimmers, their parents and their coaches.

Jo-Ann Barnas of the Detroit Free Press lamented without quoting any source, “Parents of school-age swimmers know they must have yet another heart-to-heart with their children.”  Newsday ran the headline: “Michael Phelps bong photo gives chance to talk about drugs, LI coaches say,” but despite the plural reference quoted only a single coach who opined, "It’s upsetting on so many levels … It's something that he has to live with, and we have to live with as coaches and parents."  Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post quoted two youth coaches, one of whom had already discussed the incident with his swimmers.  Gordon Andrews, who coaches high school and U-18 swimmers, told Habib, “One of my swimmers said, 'I don't see it as any big deal, especially after what he accomplished' … Some of the other swimmers I talked to felt his judgment was bad.”  Andrews added that the most serious effect could be on U-12 swimmers, "because they sometimes see our athletes, especially someone like Phelps, as almost god-like and can do no wrong, whereas the older, teenage kids see it as bad judgment and let's get over it."  A second high school coach quoted by Habib predicted, "My first gut reaction would be it would make him look more human in the eyes of the kids.  They would probably be quicker to forgive than adults will.  They don't see marijuana as being an illegal drug, a lot of them.  They think it's more like a social drug, like alcohol."

Sign of the times

Richard Crepeau, of the University of Central Florida, where he teaches American sport history, 20th Century U.S. history and American cultural history, takes a dim view of the notion that sport builds character.  On poppolitics.com Crepeau offers recent examples of Parents-Gone-Wild in youth sports, and derides a system in which the "child as surrogate for the parent has reached pathological levels."

The doping debate

The ongoing issue of doping in sports has spawned a variety of websites and discussion boards espousing a wide range of viewpoints.  See for example, http://www.steroidreport.com and http://www.mesomorphosis.com, as well as http://www.cheatorbeat.com, which invites readers to weigh in on whether athletic performances were achieved with or without banned substances.

 

A new entry on the World Wide Web is ProCon.org.  ProCon offers readers the opportunity to participate in an online debate on the question "Should performance-enhancing drugs (such as steroids) be accepted in sports?"

An example of some subjects of discussion include whether or not:

 

**Tiger Woods' alleged LASIK surgery to improve his vision to 20/15 is ethically different than an athlete taking a banned substance.

**The testing labs, such as the one that found cyclist Floyd Landis guilty of using banned drugs, are credible and reliable.

**There is a correalation between the 5% (approximate) of middle schoolers who take anabolic steroids and the use of such substances by their athlete role models.