When do drugs become performance enhancing?

Roar Pro

By Justin Barrie (cosmos forever), 1 Jun 2009 The Crowd is a Roar Pro

Tagged:: Alan Tongue, Canberra Raiders, drugs in sport, NRL, painkillers, Rugby League

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All last week Canberra has been abuzz with the Alan Tongue wrist saga. Will he get surgery or won’t he? It’s a common scenario at this time of year as lovers of all codes, from netball to AFL sweat on the fitness of key players.

On Wednesday it was clear that Tongue was likely to be out for the season. The inspirational captain had moved from a cast to strapping and neither was helping his ability to take contact on the wrist that has been worrying him for weeks.

So I was astounded this evening when sports sites (and the Canberra Raiders Twitter account) started reporting that Tongue WAS going to play the remainder of the season and was going to do it with the use of painkillers.

Now, I love my footy – but I’m also a cycling tragic. And I got to thinking – my main sport is constantly under the hammer (quite rightly) for it’s competitors taking all manner of drugs in order to win their races. In fact many riders who get found out admit that they needed to take drugs just to keep up with the demands of race organisers and the other members of the peleton.

Now – if that is the criteria – “I take drugs in order to win or even keep up with the legitimate demands of my sport” – how are painkilers any different from EPO of CERA?

To take my Raiders example – if a bloke can go from ‘out for the season requiring surgery’ to ‘I’ll play through with the aid of injections’, how is that any different to taking EPO so that you can keep up with the peleton for 6 hours over the Alpes.

Taking painkillers to take the field in football codes isn’t only openly discussed it is often lauded as courageous. I ask – if that player wouldn’t be able to perform (or even appear) without the aid of painkilling injections – aren’t they performance enhancing.

And I ask that about cycling, footy, netball and any other sport you care to mention.

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The Crowd Says (19) | Page 1 of Comments

Hoy said | June 1st 2009 @ 8:33am | Report comment

I have always pondered this.

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Brett McKay said | June 1st 2009 @ 9:07am | Report comment

yeah me too. On the surface, it looks pretty clear cut really, but I guess it’s going to come down to the difference between performance enhancement and pain relief. But then if the pain’s so bad that you can’t continue without relief, then surely that means your performance is enhanced as a result.

Hope there’s a medical opinion out there somewhere on this…

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Michael C said | June 1st 2009 @ 9:13am | Report comment

Artificial ‘enhancement’ of the players abilities (i.e. muscle building etc) vs ‘restorative’ medication to assist the player to play as near to (but not exceeding) 100% as possible.

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cosmos forever said | June 1st 2009 @ 9:37am | Report comment

I think it’s one of those things that WADA etc just can’t get a handle on.

Reckon there’s a pretty simple rule (though simple rules are always open to flaunting):

Painkillers are considered performance enhancing if used to treat an existing condition that otherwise would preclude the athlete from partaking in the contest.

Even as i type that I understand it is a compliance nightmare!

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Kurt said | June 1st 2009 @ 9:51am | Report comment

I think this example simply shows the idiocy of banning drugs of any type in sport. As far as I’m concerned, let ‘em pump themselves full of whatever they want. If this enables someone to run the 100 metres in 5 seconds before their skull explodes moments after crossing the finish line, let us not call this ‘cheating’ but rather let us marvel at the self-sacrifice of the athlete concerned in the name of human achievement. ‘Cheating’ would be catching a taxi for half the marathon, swimming with flippers (or fancy suits perhaps???), boxing with knives or competing in the sprint events on a motorbike. As long as it’s the athlete’s own body that propels them to success, what’s the problem?

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Dr. Basil Montgomery III said | June 1st 2009 @ 9:54am | Report comment

*whistle*

GREAT TOPIC! I imagine if the ruling comes in that if it’s a season-ending injury then they aren’t allowed to take the drugs then they’ll change the definition of season-ending injury and just keep listing the players as “Doubtful/Maybe” and then give them some drugs on the Friday and they’re good to go. Of course, the next stage will eliminate this behaviour and there will be a big row about the clubs that did it.

Also, why are pain killers allowed in the first place? Surely pain killers shouldn’t be allowed for any reason, even if it is just for a headache. They’re professionals so should be able to operate under all conditions. Of course, this is far too extreme.

-Me

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mtngry said | June 1st 2009 @ 10:42am | Report comment

Well, if we look at it in terms of harm. Steroids = long term harm
Playing while injured = long term harm.

I know I should not have played as much as I did when injured, made the niggle stay nlonger.

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Chop said | June 1st 2009 @ 10:46am | Report comment

Great topic, great question.

I don’t know where the border between enabling players to play with pain and performance enhancing is, but I was watching something on ESPN where they tried to establish the difference and the consensus was:

Performance enhancing improves performance whereas pain killers enable performance.

No didn’t help me much either.

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Greg Russell said | June 1st 2009 @ 3:27pm | Report comment

Two weeks ago I wrote an article for this website entitled “Oh unlucky men”. It was prompted by the cocaine positives of Richard Gasquet (tennis) and Tom Boonen (cycling), and documented my objection to cocaine being classified as a performance-enhancing drug.

For my efforts I copped some visceral abuse from a couple of readers, whose argument basically was “Anyone knows that cocaine is really banned for societal reasons, and Greg Russell is a morally repugnant person for suggesting that people should be allowed to take cocaine”.

Of course I said neither of these things, but such can be the life of a contributor to The Roar.

The best thing that came out of these exchanges is that they prompted the head of Drug Free Sport NZ to post a comment, confirming that indeed cocaine is banned because it is deemed performance enhancing.

As part of this comment Graeme Steel wrote “of greater concern, [cocaine] is arguably the most dangerous thing an athlete can take if circumstances such as dehydration and heat are added to the mix.”

In view of this I asked him why WADA allows “needling up”, as is being discussed here – it is surely just as dangerous to an athlete’s health as cocaine use before a sporting fixture can be.

I did not receive an answer to this question.

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cosmos forever said | June 1st 2009 @ 3:45pm | Report comment

yeah Greg – saw the post and stayed out of it once i saw the kind of responses you refer to!

My understanding always was that cocaine was on the list because it does alter the athletes ability to compete (amphetamines have all kinds of ‘positive’ effects on performance) though I understand completely (and don’t have an answer for ) why athletes sometimes are guilty of things that don’t actually affect their performance as athletes.

Back to the point at hand – and your final point, I don’t understand why it is permitted either. To go back to Michael C’s comment – my point is that if a player is at 30% because of an injury and uses painkillers to get back to 100% (or even a percentage lower) in my mind he has used drugs to allow him to compete at above his expected capacity = performance enhancing.

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