The Unspoken Edge: Doping and Elite Performance
Everyone—especially elite athletes—are using performance enhancing drugs.
… the problem [of PED use] is ultimately an unsolvable one. As much as I value and want to believe in the purity of sport and also support clean athletes … human beings are still evolving and just as we're figuring out how to extend our life expectancies, it's the same as enhancing our performance.
－Bryan Fogel, director, Icarus
Kevin Garnett recently called out LeBron James as a potential PED user. And while we do not have any evidence that James is using performance enhancing drugs, if he is we shouldn’t be surprised.
In fact, we shouldn’t be surprised if we find that any professional athlete is doping.
Doping is commonplace in sport; more so than we like to admit. Our baseline estimate should be that roughly 30% of professionals are doping. We should also expect that number to increase by at least 10% when we’re talking about the top performers.
We don’t need to endorse the behavior, but we shouldn’t be surprised.
But where do those estimates come from? What is the impact of PEDs? And why don’t we see more positive tests?
Estimates in Sport
The estimates for doping in sports are much higher than you might imagine. Because testing is so ineffective, we typically find survey results that report much larger rates of drug use.
In elite athletes—those competing at the top international level—researchers’ estimates range form 1% to 60%. If we assume all these estimates are equally likely—which we probably shouldn’t, but can do anyways to be generous—that would mean that a conservatively about 1-in-6 athletes are doping.
That’s one starter on each NBA team.
That’s two players on every MLB field.
That’s four players on every NFL snap.
Further, it is important to note that doping is not just for muscle growth and strength increases: though that is certainly a major goal for many.
What performance enhancing drugs do.
Doping is first and foremost a recovery tool, designed to help the body adapt faster to stimuli placed on it during training. This means that one can train harder, longer, and more often—increasing the performance gains of whatever type of activity they choose.
Endurance athletes are among the most prolific dopers, including middle and distance runners and endurance cyclists. These athletes often use high-tech forms of blood therapy to increase the amount of oxygen in their blood, increasing their endurance by as much as 10%.
There are obvious applications of this technique to NBA and MLB athletes. Especially because of the long, taxing playoffs—and especially the 162-game MLB regular season.
There is a reason both sports have long traditions of stimulant use and abuse. Long seasons, exhausting high intensity playoffs—players are looking for a pick me up.
And when it comes to muscle growth, what athlete doesn’t want to be stronger or more explosive? Historically, many athletes were afraid of becoming “muscle bound”. Now, modern science has taught coaches, trainers and athletes alike that not all strength gains necessarily come with the muscle-bound look of Mark McGuire.
Alycia Baumgartner, a boxer, recently tested positive for a number of testosterone increasing drugs. Meanwhile, she is a lean and feminine 130 pounds and signed to a modeling contract with Ford Models.
The notion that only first baseman and offensive linemen stand to benefit from steroids—and that basketball players, shortstops, and corners wouldn’t—has no basis in reality.
The impact of PEDs is massive.
Steroids significantly improve strength and endurance. Short-term usage can lead to 20% gains in strength and a quick 10-pound gain in muscle.
With some subjects responding especially well, and gaining as much to 50% more mass than they otherwise would have.
For football fans, that 20% difference in strength is roughly the difference in strength between a linebacker and a cornerback.
The players who are going to benefit the most are those who are in strength, speed, or endurance dominant sports. As well as players who starting to age, and want to prolong their careers.
Consider that of the top home run hitters of the 90s, 6 of 8 are connected to steroids: Mark McGwire (405), Barry Bonds (361), Juan Gonzalez (339), Sammy Sosa (332), Rafael Palmeiro (328), and Jose Canseco (303).
Where are the positive tests?
While doping is relatively easy—an amateur or youth athlete can successfully dope without much supervision—testing is much harder.
Consider that Lance Armstrong, who dominated cycling for nearly a decade, never failed a single test.
Barry Bonds, baseball’s notorious home run king, never failed a test issued by Major League Baseball. And many of baseball’s great dopers similarly, never failed tests.
In surveys of Olympic athletes, up to 60% of athletes say that they have or are taking performance enhancing drugs—while only around 5% of athletes fail drug tests. That means that for every failed drug test, there are 11 more PED users that were not caught.
And consider that some forms of medicalized cheating in sport—such as blood doping—are undetectable using run-of-the-mill urine tests. There is simply no way to get a red blood cell count from urine—the most popular method of drug testing across sports.
The best methods doping remain undetectable through typical testing procedures.
What rate should we suspect among top performers?
Given the evidence, we should expect top performers in every sport to have a rate of doping around 40%, with the general professional athlete population doping at a rate closer to 1-in-3.
That means that while our assumption should be that any given athlete is not doping, we should never be surprised to find out if an athlete is doping.
Somewhat contradictorily, we should also assume that a good portion of every professional team are doping. We should assume that on a given play or possession, it is unlikely that everyone involved is clean.
Consider the following play, in which a hockey player makes a check, steals the puck, passes it to his teammate, the teammate shoots, and then the puck is grabbed out of the air by the goalie.
In this play, four players are involved. Using the generic professional estimate of 30%, there is an 87% chance that at least one of the players is on performance enhancing drugs.
If we extend that idea out to the entire field of play, the results become pretty staggering.
In baseball—the sport with the worst reputation—we would need to watch 3 full seasons of baseball—every at bat by every team—before we could expect to see a single diamond featuring only clean players.
In basketball and hockey, we would need to watch 19 and 22 seasons—every lineup of every game—before we’d expect to see a clean field of play.
And in football and soccer… we can give up. There are simply too many athletes on the field for us to ever have confidence in seeing a professional field of play where none of the athletes are dopers.
So… Should we legalize it?
Unfortunately, legalizing doping in sports invites a number of problems that keeping it illegal does not.
The challenges of regulating doping, and ensuring the safety of athletes who are manipulating their blood, their muscles, and their hormones, is no easy matter. Leagues are increasingly seen as responsible for the safety of their players. That would no doubt extend to the safety of their doping.
Keeping doping illegal in sport absolves the leagues of this responsibility and the only cost is on the fans, to sustain the suspension of disbelief. Fans must trust the leagues when they say their sports are clean. Which admittedly, they don’t do often. Because no one asks.
Because everyone knows.