Sports steroid use issue lingers
Last week, in the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials, sprinter Tyson Gay not only qualified, but broke the world record 100-meter dash time with a blazing 9.68 seconds.
Gay’s excitement was short lived when it was announced his record would not count because of a gusty tailwind during the race.
Wind-aided times are not considered official.
However, the wind is not the real issue here. As more records are broken, talk of illegal steroid use becomes more and more common, and for good reason.
If Gay’s record had stood, he would have been the forth sprinter within the past year to surpass Maurice Greene’s supposedly unbeatable record of 9.79 seconds.
Since Greene set the record in 1999, seven different sprinters have reached the list of top-10 fastest times, some more than once.
Every athlete in the Top 10 set their respective times after 1990. This is coincidentally the start of the “steroid era” in sports, when drug use became rampant.
Many remember when Ben Johnson was stripped of his 1988 Olympic medal after testing positive for illegal steroids.
More recently, Tim Montgomery’s record time of 9.78 in 2002 was invalidated when he was pinned in a national performance drug scandal.
Justin Gatlin ran a record time of 9.77 seconds in 2006, only to have it annulled in 2007 due to a failed drug test.
With so many recent cases of proven foul play, it is staggering to think of how many instances go by unnoticed.
Of course, it is possible the drug-testing system is working efficiently and those who have been caught are the only ones who have cheated.
With each year, technology and training methods drastically improve.
It is worth considering the 100-meter record being broken more and more frequently is just a consequence of the sport’s rapid advancement.
But if that is the case, then why is this particular event the only one that has shown such immediate growth? Very few records in any sport are broken as often as the men’s 100-meter dash. Even other track and field events pale in comparison.
The only comparable scenario is Major League Baseball’s single-season homerun record, which has been broken three times in the last 10 years.
But baseball is in the middle of the biggest controversy in sports history, especially around the homerun record. So why do we assume track athletes are innocent and clean? Because as long as the athlete is a step ahead of the authority, it is nothing more than a guessing game.
—Dillon Hart
Staff Writer
