American way is whatever it takes to win
David Hannigan in New York
Saturday December 4, 2004
The Guardian
In one corner of California, prosecutors in the Balco investigation
are trying to blow the lid off the biggest steroids scandal in US
history. In another, a grass-roots political movement is
endeavouring to change the country's constitution so that the
Austrian-born governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, arguably the
most famous self-confessed steroid-user in the world, can one
day run for president.
That nobody finds this dichotomy at the heart of America's
attitude to drugs in sport the slightest bit ironic is hardly
surprising.
"The use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, football
and other sports is dangerous and it sends the wrong message:
that there are short cuts to accomplishment and that
performance is more important than character," President
George W Bush said in his State of the Union address last
January. "So tonight I call on team owners, union
representatives, coaches and players to take the lead, to send
the right signal, to get tough and to get rid of steroids now."
Even allowing for the fact that in a previous life, as owner of the
Texas Rangers, Bush had signed José Canseco, once
described as the "Typhoid Mary of steroids", there was
optimism that the president's speech would usher in a new era
of White House interest in the issue. But when Schwarzenegger
took the stage as a keynote speaker at the Republican
presidential convention eight months later, steroids seemed to
have disappeared from the agenda.
As soon as the first excerpts from Martin Bashir's ABC
television interview with the Balco founder Victor Conte began
leaking out this week the moral equivocation began on the
airwaves. For every fan willing to denounce Marion Jones, Barry
Bonds and other superstars as heroes with feet of clay, there
were two trying to justify the use of performance-enhancing
substances.
The most facetious argument proffered is that the drugs don't
work unless the talent is there, that the hand-eye co-ordination
required to hit a baseball coming towards you at 95mph cannot
be improved by bulking up on steroids. Equally popular is the
candid admission by many that they don't care how Bonds hits
home runs as long as he hits them.
In the wake of news that the New York Yankees' Jason Giambi
reportedly confessed to the Balco grand jury that he had used
steroids, a host on WFAN, the No1 sports-talk radio station in
New York, postulated that it was up to the athletes if they
wanted to risk their long-term health for short-term gains.
Sixteen years after Ben Johnson's gold in Seoul was stripped
from him, this country appears to be a decade behind Europe in
its approach to the problem.
From time to time media outlets tut-tut about the growing abuse
of steroids by high school athletes. According to a 2002 survey,
30% of high school gridiron players use supplements to gain
weight, and in California the road south to Tijuana, Mexico,
which boasts 1,500 pharmacies that openly sell a cornucopia of
performance-enhancing substances, is known among teenage
boys as the Roid Corridor. How puzzling, then, that two months
ago Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have required
high-school coaches in the state to learn the dangers of steroids
and would have established a list of banned substances.
Every Saturday morning, infomercials peddling HGH (human
growth hormone) fill television time slots, and across the US
gyms are overrun with the stuff. The easy availability may
explain the ambivalence towards them and it doesn't help that
there is no stigma attached to getting caught.
The former Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos linebacker Bill
Romanowski is one of several NFL players alleged in the Balco
investigation to have received the designer drug THG. Now
retired, he popped up on television the other week as a
co-commentator for a college gridiron game involving his alma
mater Boston College. In other nations he might be considered a
pariah. Here he's seen as an articulate analyst with a good
future on the box.
Next Saturday Bonds comes to New York to meet fans at the
Marriott Marquis in Times Square. For an admission fee of
$7,500 (£3,900), supporters can participate in a
question-and-answer session with the home-run-hitting
behemoth and the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez.
To the outsider, it appears a ridiculous exercise. Round here,
they bill it as the Christmas gift for the fan who has everything.
Everything except the truth.
sport.guardian.co.uk
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