The current buzzword may be steroids, but the list of performance enhancing drugs includes human growth hormone (hGH), IGF-1, insulin (yes, insulin), EPO, clenbuterol, diuretics, central nervous system stimulators, and a variety of anabolic steroids. The use of such 'doping' agents extends throughout the wide world of sports from the more visibly suspect bodybuilding, powerlifting, weightlifting and football to baseball, track and field, swimming, soccer, volleyball, tennis, ice hockey, cross country skiing and even table tennis.

Not long after the column was published, Floyd Landis won the 2006 Tour de France, the world’s most prestigious cycling event, overcoming a seemingly insurmountable 8-minute deficit in the final days of the 3-week-long stage race.

Shortly after that, Floyd Landis’ victory was tainted and put in severe jeopardy when a urine sample taken tested positive for testosterone. The ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was found to be 11 to 1, well over the 4:1 limit allowed by anti-doping authorities.

The heading for the SOUND OFF column in our July Issue was “It’s Not Just The Big Boys ‘N Girls”, and the text read as follows:

The public image of drug use in sports tends to begin and end with images of huge, ripped bodybuilders, suddenly hulking baseball sluggers whose home run production increased in tempo with their body size, football running backs who pack more beef on their frames than the linemen of yesterday, or perhaps the track stars, male and female, with lean racehorse bodies propelled on incredibly muscular and powerful legs. But what about the ‘little’ boys and girls…the less bulky and muscular athletes who compete in tennis and cycling and volleyball and swimming and skiing and….well, table tennis??

The fact is, the use of banned performance enhancing drugs and substances is not limited to the more easily ‘visible’ athletes and trainees. Any substance than can increase strength or speed or endurance or energy output is going to be used somewhere, sometime.

But sometimes when you win, you really lose.

About the time this column went ‘live’, newspapers and television stations buzzed with the story that Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley admitted to the use not only of steroids but of Human Growth Hormone and amphetamines. Grimsley, a long-time journeyman relief pitcher, failed a drug test in 2003 and law enforcement agencies had subsequently been monitoring his activity. At one point this year, they intercepted a package sent to him that contained a supply of Human Growth Hormone. Faced with some tough options, Grimsley proceeded to blow the whistle on baseball’s widespread use of amphetamines and hGH.

Among other things, Grimsley told how amphetamines get passed around the league and why they’re

used. Amphetamines are taken by players because they increase alertness and awareness and enhance physical energy. Grimsley said that a major source of the amphetamines around the league are the Latin players and those on California teams since they have a short drive to Mexico to pick up the drugs. At one point he described how the amphetamines are placed in coffee pots marked “leaded” and “unleaded”.

Grimsley also reportedly told authorities how he switched from steroids to Human Growth Hormone use because there is presently no reliable test to detect hGH. Not only were a lot of people unaware that hGH use is so common among baseball players, they were also puzzled as to how a pitcher would benefit from the hormone. After all, the public image of the baseball player who uses performance enhancing drugs is one of a beefed up home run hitter who reaps the benefit of added power to his swing from the drugs. But why would a pitcher, who rarely steps into the batters box, resort to using hGH?

According to some major leaguers, it makes you throw harder and rebound (recuperate) quicker. This opinion is backed up by the statistic that 6 out of the 12 players nabbed for steroid use last year were pitchers.

The Floyd Landis episode and the revelations of John Grimsley only served to prove the ‘prophecy’ of our columns. But sometimes you’d almost rather be wrong than right.

Arley Vest