Life

TV review: Doping in sport just what the doctor didn't order

Billy Foley

Billy Foley

Billy has almost 30 years’ experience in journalism after leaving DCU with a BAJ. He has worked at the Irish Independent, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent in Dublin, the Cork-based Evening Echo and the New Zealand Herald. He joined the Irish News in 2000, working as a reporter and then Deputy News Editor. He has been News Editor since 2007

 Dr Xand van Tulleken holding a bottle of anabolic steroids. Picture by Annie Mackinder (BBC)
Dr Xand van Tulleken holding a bottle of anabolic steroids. Picture by Annie Mackinder (BBC) Dr Xand van Tulleken holding a bottle of anabolic steroids. Picture by Annie Mackinder (BBC)

Horizon: Sports Doping, Winning At Any Cost?

BBC 2, Tuesday at 8pm

Athletes taking illegal substances to improve their performance is as old as the Olympics itself but there is renewed vigour to our concern after Russia was caught doping on an industrial scale.

Even the efforts of Putin to promote his country though drug enhanced sporting achievement isn’t that new - East Germany used the machinery of government in the 1970s and 80s to do the same thing, in a fantasy that sporting achievement would help to gloss over its disastrous economy.

Dr Xand van Tulleken's film, however, was more concerned with the abuses of the individual rather than the state and for much of the documentary focused on the misuse of drugs for vanity purposes rather than to improve competitive performance.

He focused on the estimated 60,000 to 200,000 users of steroids in the UK. These, mostly men, use often untested drugs sourced on the internet to improve their muscle definition.

It’s a drug associated with bodybuilding but Dr Van Tulleken reckoned it was increasingly being used by successful middle-aged men who are concerned about their body shape and can’t devote enough time to the gym to get the results they want.

He was honest enough to admit that he had given a passing thought himself to the idea that a couple of injections would give him the body he always dreamed about.

Not surprisingly, however, he decided against it listing the harmful side effects of steroid use, including heart problems, diabetes and depression.

The second half of the film was the more interesting, looking at the latest developments in sports doping.

So called ‘gene doping’ in just being developed and involves the altering of the DNA make-up of an athlete to make them better at a specific task. The problem for the regulators is that it’s almost undetectable.

Dr Van Tulleken also explained a legal way of improving performance, dubbed ‘brain doping’.

It’s said the some cycling teams are already using a system whereby an electrical current is introduced to the brain reducing the pain felt during strenuous physical exercise.

Without this demand from the brain for the body to stop, athletes can improve performance in endurance sports by up to 20 per cent.

He also discussed the performance enhancing abilities of caffeine and we learned that a decision was taken not to ban it because the drug is so widely available and regularly consumed by almost everyone that it would be impossible to enforce.

Caffeine is used extensively in sports where long periods of concentration are required.

The regulators will never win the drugs battle, but if sport is to retain any integrity they must at least limit the worst of the excesses.

Even a legal scenario where endurance athletes wear an electrical headband to interrupt their pain reflex while popping caffeine tablets would be distasteful.

***

The Open, Sky Sports, Sunday

Concerns about the BBC surrendering its rights to the British Open golf to Sky have subsided after the broadcaster's excellent week long coverage.

Sky used many of the techniques of the US broadcasters, making the BBC’s approach look like something from the 1980s.

Where the BBC, in its highlights package, still had the brilliant octogenarian Peter Alliss and ‘Ken on the Course’; Sky had live coverage of practice rounds from the Monday and swing lessons from players at the ‘Open Zone’ broadcast from the practice ground.

New features also included two ‘wire-cams’, including at the famous ‘Postage Stamp’ hole, eight bunker cameras, two ball-tracking cameras and the brilliant pro-tracer system showing ball-flight.