Steroids in Sport

I

ian

New Member
First off I want to stress that I have nothing against anyone that takes steroids!

It is use in professional sport that I am commenting on!!!

I watched the worlds strongest man last week.
At the end of the program the show was dedicated to a 25-30 year old competitor who had died of ‘an unknown genetic heart disorder’. Is that the same genetic heart defect that has claimed many bodybuilders (wasn’t mike mentzer one? hasn’t arnie had a few heart operations{I know steroids were legal in his day}?), and the same heart defect that kills an oversized wrestler ever couple of weeks?

However their use is not just the sports you traditionally require size to win
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If you look at myself compared to average joe, after 10 years of training for size, eating raw eggs, protein shakes, tuna etc training until I was ill, I look well. However, if I stood on the Olympic 100m starting line, I’d be standing next to a group of gentlemen that train for running, not size, and yet I’d have the worst shoulders and biceps by a mile!

IT frustrates me when people believe these athletes to be natural. People forget the likes of those caught (eg marion jones, dwain chambers) and assume that they should be able to reach similar speed/ strength/ of just aesthetically advanced naturally.

It is now my opinion that most athletes take steroids/GH to compete with others. And to those that say ‘yeah, but they get tested’, bodybuilders get tested, are you telling me that they are all natural? I once read an article about how Jay Cutler had been found to be taking illegal diuretics, however, the results had to be thrown out because of a possible mix-up at the lab!

Just a rant, I don’t know what the solution is, I don’t know what the purpose of this post is, I just thought I’d put it up there and see were it goes!
 
My only greievance is the abuse/not use of steroids that cause some premature deaths, rage, and some other factors that soil their use and cause illegality for others who would not abuse them so.
If I cared much about sports, I'd say it's an unfair advantage since testing is flawed at best, and "natural" can even mean you got where you are with 'roids, but don't use them now.
 
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I don't know about most of what you were saying, but...



...it is naive of people to believe that everyone, or at least almost everyone, at the top levels of all sports are not taking drugs. Not necessarily anabolic steroids, but other things as well. I just assume they all use something.

To get to the top, you do what you have to. That's the mentality you must have to get to the top. Ergo...
 
I supposed that's one way of looking at it, i just find it a contrediction that one day the media are saying the likes of Marion Jones is scum and the next, they are saying of someone who took steroids until they died.... 'this guy died because of a genetic heart defect'. That's clearly just not the truth!

Where's the consistency?
So if you get caught taking steroids your the worst of the worst, but if you die of their abuse it gets covered up?

Incidentally for those who don't know, Marion Jones is one of the most accomplished female athletes ever, winning about 5 golds in one olympics, she's been done for using steroids, lost all of her medals and is now facing jail for lying about it in court
Jesse Marunde is the Worlds strongest man competitor i mentioned above, 2 minutes research lead me to the following 'The fact that he was a World's Strongest Man competitor and the fact that he had previously pleaded guilty to criminal possession of anabolic steroids led to speculation that steroids played a part in his death.'
 
It is an ignorant stance to assume that steroids are directly responsible for all those heart problems. Someone with a congenital defect is going to be screwed either way - steroids or not. Further, athletes who aren't on steroids sometimes drop dead for no apparent reason. That's just how it happens.
For all the people who took steroids and died, you can find a large number that used steroids and did not die. I'd wager the proportions of steroid users dying from heart related causes is very close to the same proportions you'd find amongst the non-steroid using crowd.

That said, obviously there are side effects to using steroids but anyone with half a wit takes the necessary precautions.
 
Whether or not Jesse Marunde was juicing, the cause of death was, I believe, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes. I think I also read at the time that a relative of his (an uncle?) had died of the same condition.

If you think you might be affected, it has got to be worth having your heart checked out if you intend to take up a sport that is really going to push it to its physical limits, although I'm not sure how easy this condition is to diagnose?
 
Dear me, this is obviously not the site to make any sort of comment on anything to do with steroids.

Totentanz/lol, it's a school boy error for me to disagree with you, as you’re clearly going to lyrically kick my ass, but I’m going to stand my ground!

Yes the proportion of the population that takes steroids and those that don't, probably do have a similar number of heart related deaths, but that’s because the general population as are far more likely to be unhealthy/obese than an athlete on steroids. While I accept that millions of people use steroids without any effects, you can’t write about them like they’re good for you!

As for ignorance, it would be ignorant to assume steroids did not play a part in this particular case and you know it would.

Anyway, it has never been my intention to comment on general steroid use. 90% of my gym buds take stuff and they all look good, so hats off to them! Hey, there probably healthier than me too!

My article was intended to make comment on the use of drugs in professional sport and the way the media covers this, however this has obviously been lost somewhere along the way.

(Go easy on me!)
 
I reiterate: guys who abuse them make the news, because bad news is the only news. That's one reason why they're illegal. Some guys have died who might not have been abusing them, but just using; and might have died the same way anyway, as was suggested, but wouldn't have made the news for long if it weren't for the usage of 'roids.
Scroo the media.
As for sports, it's just too bad. Same for BB'ing. You don't play the game; you don't win. That's how it is.
 
Hey ian, no offence meant mate. I was merely passing on what I have read about Jesse's case (a while ago now, so more may have come to light since I last looked). I have no way of knowing whether or not Jesse took steroids - my guess would be that he probably did at some time in his career but I don't know. My feeling is that drugs were not the root cause of his condition and, as Totz pointed out, for every case where you point the finger at roids there's another where roids were not part of the equation so I do think that it's naïve to blame roids for health problems in anyone who uses them without much more information. That is what the media do, as Quad pointed out.

Personally, I have never taken anything apart from creatine (and protein powder, but I class that as a food supp) and my intention was not to imply that I condone the use AAS. I realise that I will never be able to develop my physique to the level I once thought possible but I'm an old bloke now and my priorities are different. Of course, this is in part down to my genetics too. If you look at bbers prior to the 1930s you get a better idea of what might well be possible to attain with hard work and dedication (if you are fortunate you will do even better than them because they weren't privy to our present day scientific insight. I'm just happy to be able to keep lifting and making little bits of progress here and there. It's very satisfying.

I do think that it's just about impossible to police the use of steroids in sports particularly if the stakes are high. There will always be a clever chemist out there who is willing to 'help' an athlete to test negative for the right price.

One question to ask yourself is how you decide on a situation where you have two very similar athletes competing in the same event but one has a naturally higher testosterone level than the other and so always wins. Do you level the field by allowing the athlete with the lower level to boost their testosterone to match the level of the other? What about response to anabolics? Some are more sensitive to them than others (or we'd see Jay Cutlers everywhere). There are a million questions like this based around what is fair in sports.

If a 'safe' level of use was decided upon (it's never going to happen) then all athletes that wanted to could take up to that level. Some would still take more and some wouldn't want to take any at all but at least the public would be aware that drugs are involved in sports and that there's no getting away from it.
 
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