Drug Cheats - Do Hall of Fame Talents Deserve Hall of Fame Recognition?
A Charlie Francis quote from Mehaffey's article inspired this post. Francis was the great, but controversial coach of Ben Johnson, who won the Seoul Olympics 100 metres dash in an astonishing time of 9.79 seconds. A day later, Ben Johnson was stripped of the gold medal and Carl Lewis was declared the winner of the race.
"Steroids could not replace talent, or training, or a well-planned competitive program." "They could not transform a plodder into a champion. But they had become an essential ingredient within a complex recipe." Charlie Francis
The preceding quote by Charlie Francis is the reason why this blog is being written. It's a quote that I inherently believe to be true, but do you? If you do believe it to be true, how should one view the athletic accomplishments and legacies of the many athletes in all sports who used Performance Enhancing Drugs as a part of their 'complex recipe?'
Comments on the subject are welcome on this blog - Rarely do people comment on what I've written. This blog is being created to spark dialogue on the subject.
Hi Clarence --
ReplyDeleteFunny you should post this now. Just watched a rerun of the 30 for 30 doc "9.79" late last night and what I find astonishing is how we've come to demonize this stuff even more in the last 25 years.
Francis is right, and Malcolm Gladwell had an interesting piece along these lines recently in The New Yorker. There were some interesting quotes from Tyler Hamilton in all this that I find fascinating, given what's happened.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/09/09/130909crat_atlarge_gladwell
What we have is a mixture of Victorian sentimentalism and a revulsion about "drugs" that makes it difficult to have any kind of a nuanced, adult conversation about steroids and sports. The media plays into this as well, while doing nothing to critically examine the anti-steroids crusaders.
Thanks for posting this.