This is getting ridiculous

[bigDman]

FOX Sports on MSN - More Sports - German billiards champ tests positive for EPO agent

[Mahler]

For my money, records don't mean much anymore.
Future record books will have to have so many footnotes to keep track of what the person used to get the edge to "win." I use the term "win" very loosely.

[Matthew]

Billiards?

[PowerManDL]

Who cares? People want performances, they're getting them.

When people stop caring about seeing record-shattering performances, drugs will go away.

Athletes have been after an edge as long as there have been athletes.

[K-Court]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Billiards?

x2

[Mahler]

Originally Posted by PowerManDL

Who cares? People want performances, they're getting them.

When people stop caring about seeing record-shattering performances, drugs will go away.

Athletes have been after an edge as long as there have been athletes.

I guess I am just old fashioned. Wanting a record and being willing to do anything to get it used to be called determination. Somehow I admired those people more than I do current record holders whose idea of determination includes having a pharmacy on their side. Will my opinion change things? Nope. But, I can quite easily withhold my respect and frequently do. And, it does not have anything to do with it being legal or illegal. I think it used to be called character. Nah! That can't be it.

[Frank.S]

billiars = pool.

maybe there is more to it then we think, there are alot of other uses for epo then performance enhancing properties.

[PowerManDL]

@ Mahler:

So you're under the impression that the guys at the highest level haven't maxed out human performance potentials, and instead are reliant on the drugs to achieve national and international levels of competition?

[RobLL]

Sports thrives on competition and awards. As such there is an inner contradiction because of the competition becomes ultra intense and the rewards becomes Midas-ian the whole thing breaks down. It has long struck me that sports at the highschool level is probably where the dynamics of competition and rewards functiions in harmony with the ideals of athletics.

[Deserve]

Originally Posted by RobLL

Sports thrives on competition and awards. As such there is an inner contradiction because of the competition becomes ultra intense and the rewards becomes Midas-ian the whole thing breaks down. It has long struck me that sports at the highschool level is probably where the dynamics of competition and rewards functiions in harmony with the ideals of athletics.

I think that is mostly true but even that is starting to get off balance in spots.

[Mahler]

Originally Posted by PowerManDL

@ Mahler:

So you're under the impression that the guys at the highest level haven't maxed out human performance potentials, and instead are reliant on the drugs to achieve national and international levels of competition?

It's not an impression so much as an observation. I used the word "future" in my statement, because I think this is where we are headed. The guys at the highest levels today are under the microscope where this is concerned, so we may actually be seeing some pretty impressive stuff. We may never actually know what "maxed out human performance potential" actually is, however, as the acceptance of human performance enhancement becomes more wide-spread. The average guy on the street already doesn't give a shit if his favorite player "uses an edge" as long as his team wins. That is where we will have to then make the distinction between the athlete and the athlete/entertainer.

I get into these discussions all the time and I know the numbers and opinions are against me, but, like I say, I am old fashioned. Sometimes, I am pretty proud of that.

[PowerManDL]

I know that you have your viewpoint and I have mine, but I'm just wanting to have a discussion, so bear with me if you want.

We may not know the limits of human performance, but within certain tolerances we have an idea.

In 1988, Ben Johnson set the WR in the 100m sprint with a 9.79 time. Asafa Powell, the current "fastest man alive", beats that with a cool 9.77 100m time.

Johnson was dinged for steroids in the 88 Olympics; as Charlie Francis has admitted since then, it's well known that everyone was on back then (and still are).

20 years, and even with the prevalence of steroids, the best we can do is .02 seconds.

It's the same with strength records. Alexeyev's records set back in the 70s in weightlifting are being skirted now, but not really blown away by anybody.

Paul Anderson live pre-steroids, and some of what he did is still stuff of legend.

Bodybuilding? Without steroids they're really screwed. Grimek, Reeves, Park, guys like that pretty much showed us the limits of a steroid-free body. It's impressive, but it's not going to be equivalent to the mass-monsters of today.

What I'm getting at is that in performance sports, the gains from using don't add up to much. The idea of diminishing returns really plays at the elite world level. The guys aren't on all that much to begin with, for one, and for two, it's just enough to allow them to tolerate the workloads that are required to shave off that extra .02 seconds or add that extra .1 kilo to the barbell. When it's all said and done, the elite are elites because of genetics, hard work, and determination. The steroids are a marginal return.

Bodybuilding, sure: without steroids and various other drugs, that sport in its current form wouldn't exist.

But, the point being, we've got a pretty good idea of human performance limits, barring the occasional +2 standard deviations that will inevitably come up. Steroids are giving only marginal returns at the top of sports.

[Mahler]

How do we know that they are "marginal" returns if we don't know for sure who is using and how much? They don't exactly publish that in their bios, now, do they?

I think we do agree on the genetics, hard work and determination to a great extent, but given that elite athletes are all cut from this same cloth in these respects, I see a future that is already unfolding where the "edge" that they try to get today, will be nothing compared to what will be possible. Will we be genetically engineering the fetus in the womb to be a long distance runner, a weight lifter, a sprinter, or a particular position on a team already signing him/her for a future contract? The stuff of science fiction, you might say, but definitely a possibility. Hell, we have misguided parents today who hold their kids back in school so they have an extra year to grow and compete.

[ninja]

@PMDL

I understand the point of marginal returns and where you're coming from on that. I happen to think that frankly, if you're not juicing you're not trying especially in all sports that you can get away with it in.

That said, do you think there is a distinction that we can make in regards to what people could do with and without? Take Barry Bonds. In all likelihood, Bonds is a surefire HOFer and is a member of the 600 homerun club. He was great. But rather, steroids made Bonds very great.

For shits and grins, looking at Bonds' stats I'm going to assume that he started to juice in 1996. (I know that Game of Shadows probably pinpoints this down even further. Maybe someone who've read it knows) Obviously, without steroids, there's nothing in Bonds' past history that says he'd hit 73 homeruns in a season or even come close to breaking the all time record.

While Bonds' is probably done, and the margin between his record and Aaron's isn't going to be that great; at what point can we say that it wasn't Bonds' talent breaking the record but rather the help he had?

[PowerManDL]

Originally Posted by ninja

@PMDL

I understand the point of marginal returns and where you're coming from on that. I happen to think that frankly, if you're not juicing you're not trying especially in all sports that you can get away with it in.

That said, do you think there is a distinction that we can make in regards to what people could do with and without? Take Barry Bonds. In all likelihood, Bonds is a surefire HOFer and is a member of the 600 homerun club. He was great. But rather, steroids made Bonds very great.

The thing of it is, as has been mentioned so often, it's really hard to say where the line is drawn.

Steroids increase muscle mass, they increase recovery ability, and some of them can increase motor output (aka strength, power).

As a general rule using steroids to improve sports like baseball, tennis, anything with a fine skill requirement, is the equivalent of trying to get better handling out of your drifting Nissan Skyline by sticking a V-12 in it.

A brute-force solution to a problem that requires elegance, in other words.

There's no doubt that being stronger has contributed to his success, from a simple physics standpoint. Being able to apply more force to the ball, and to do so consistently over entire seasons, will no doubt play a role.

But by the same token, you can't just take any guy off the street, give him the same drug regimen, and get the same results. Joe Average probably won't have the coordination, the general athletic skill, the responses to AAS, and so on.

It's hard to quantify what kind of gains and athletic carryover would actually result from pharmaceutical assistance. In bodybuilding and powerlifting it's easy. More muscle is good for everybody, and more aggression/central stimulation yields more strength. But it doesn't affect fine motor skills that way.

The real benefit for these guys: recovery is strongly enhanced. Volumes of work that would slaughter a mortal are suddenly quite tolerable. That's the real magic that steroids work on this kind of sport. In a sense it'd be a better analogy to say that steroids simply boost the qualities that are already present.

In that sense, I think we're in agreement.

For shits and grins, looking at Bonds' stats I'm going to assume that he started to juice in 1996. (I know that Game of Shadows probably pinpoints this down even further. Maybe someone who've read it knows) Obviously, without steroids, there's nothing in Bonds' past history that says he'd hit 73 homeruns in a season or even come close to breaking the all time record.

While Bonds' is probably done, and the margin between his record and Aaron's isn't going to be that great; at what point can we say that it wasn't Bonds' talent breaking the record but rather the help he had?

That's a really hard question to answer. Unfortunately we just don't have that kind of data so any guess would be a very wild speculation (i.e., pulled from my ass).

The real question to me, though: how much does that distinction matter?

Are people really watching sports for some measure of sanctity? Or are they watching for the end result? I'll get back on topic before this spirals into a rant on the role of sports in our society.

For example, what differentiates improvement of the athlete from improvement of equipment?

Or hell, let's go even further: what differentiates improved training methods, improved nutrition, improved recovery/restoration methods, improved supplements, ad infinitum, from AAS usage?

In other words, why are we drawing the line in the sand with AAS considering the amount of money, time and research spent maximizing every other aspect of the athlete? It seems somewhat out of place.

Thoughts?

[Chiron]

I gotta agree with Dio's point about human potential.

Damn cheating billiards players. Except that one hot chick. She's ok.