Olympic athletes (legally) use banned drugs

> The argument in favour of TUEs, which were first introduced in the early 1990s, is that they level the playing field for athletes deemed to be suffering from legitimate medical concerns that can be treated with otherwise-banned drugs.

I'm not sure I'm on board with this. Presumably, by "level the playing field" they mean "make the person better/more competitive." So why not let anyone take drugs to make it easier for them to compete as well? It isn't just hard work and dedication that makes a top athlete.

> But you see a heck of a lot of athletes with puffers, which seems statistically unlikely because for somebody to become a world-class athlete they probably wouldn't start out with a puffer.

Some of it can be training induced asthma, though. At least it was quite common when I grew up that the cross country skiers all had breathing problems from training hard in cold weather. (There is better knowledge and guidelines and regulations around this now, at least, avoiding exposing kids to this too much).

That's two front-page articles in one day where the auto-removal of "how" makes the headline confusing/misleading.

Is this auto-edit rule really worth it?

I can't wait for the "enhanced games" to take place and finally put to rest this nonsensical morality over performance enhancing drugs.

Every professional athlete uses PEDs already and they do so discretely. Let's dispell with the nonsense that they don't.

Take the 23 Chinese swimmers who all got caught and WADA hand waived it by saying it was doped meat. Are you kidding me?

Common complaints about PED use range from inaccurate to outright lies. Steroids can be used at appreciable levels 200-500mg when blood tests are done regularly. Damage to the cardio system only occurs when you don't do cardio and let your hematocrit get too high.

Pro athletes who do PEDs will have access to the best doctors and medical care money can buy. They are prized stallions and will be well taken care of.

So that leaves us with the final one which is, "it will encourage normies to do PEDs for the gainz!"

Trust me, every fitness magazine does that already.

The sooner the WADA, USADA , and IOC get a kick to the face when the attention to them disappears is when this pearl clutching finally ends.

Sports are entertainment, people want to be entertained, and advertisers want eyeballs. If it falls outside of that scope then it's a waste of time.

Old article from Fuzzy Bear / RU hacks in retaliation to Sochi drama.

Subsequent leaks show US/Australia/France account for something like 60% of ~1000 global TUEs. TUEs is just west being good at lawfare to stack games in their favour, from having shitload of medals in swimming (or cutting medals in weightlifting) etc etc.

My hot take as someone who enjoys strength sports, especially the untested drama is TUEs is more pernicious to fairness than banned PEDs. Banned PEDs actually have to be cycled off prior to competition, most of their value is increasing recovery, enabling more training etc. Meanwhile TUEs affect actual competition. Stuff like Adderall ADHD TUEs particularly "mental" performance enhancing, like everyone who trains seriously knows mental game is what makes a huge difference at top after physicality is filtered by genetics. If athlete mentally not capable of training protocol, they might as well as be genetically cursed.

And yet when 23 Chinese swimmers use banned drugs, it's waved away as a "they somehow all ingested the same doped meat" and nothing happens.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/world/asia/chinese-swimme...

I always think of the steroid xkcd when this stuff comes up: https://xkcd.com/1173/

This is bad journalism. The writers have not done their research on the effects of the "banned drugs" they are mentioning. Someone who doesn't have ADHD would only get negative side-effects from taking stimulants, like hunger suppression, anxiety, depression and much more. Stimulants don't have the same effect on a brain that is not dopamine deficient. Ventolin for asthma has absolutely no effect on someone who doesn't have an issue with their airways narrowing due to asthma.

Besides, the information they are reporting on is private and was wrongfully leaked. Broadcasting it and even framing it in a bad light is simply wrong.

If anything, the athletes who truly are abusing these TUE rules probably do so out of superstition, to gain any advantage possible, real or otherwise. But I do not believe that they gain an actual advantage over other competitors who aren't taking these drugs.