Using Chemical Enhancements in Competitive Sports

Feeling old, ignorant, naive and shocked. I just read about a Olympic swimmer that got banned for using tamoxifen to block estrogen production so that he might swim faster. When I was a kid, I dreamed of swimming in the Olympics. Swam the butterfly, freestyle and had a half-way decent back stroke. But it never occurred to me to try to improve my time by using stuff.

Fact is, when a hot-shot swimming coach told me that the only way I get trained for the Olympics was if I “bulked up”. I was appalled! I mean, I was already pretty darn good, third best in the state when I was thirteen. I was the best 'flier on my swim team and at my school. I could beat the guys on the team and the boys at my high school. Naturally, he didn't become my trainer. It was discouraging, because I wanted to go to the trials, and every one said that one needed a good coach to advance. Besides, my parents weren't really in a position to pay for that sort of thing.

So discouragement started to set in. But I kept going to practice with my local YMCA where I had been a member of the swim team for years. Then one of the gym teachers at my high school offered to coach me. Mr. P (I don't think I should include his name out of respect for his privacy) was very thoughtful and encouraging. Furthermore, when I told him what I had been hearing about the “necessity” of taking steroids, he became very angry and said that the only reason he had offered to coach me was because I was and “honest” swimmer, which I was. Besides, the school was not going to renew his contract and give him tenure was because he was gay, and many parents didn't want him teaching there.

So for Mr. P, coaching the black kid to the Olympics would have been a good way to “stick it to the administration”he said, getting me into the Olympics. And he would coach me for free! Just because.When he was re-assured that I hadn't gotten involved with any of that sort of thing he calmed down, and I started working with him. That is until I got a terrible cold, with a horrible sore throat and couldn't breathe. My mother thought I was faking to get out of school, but I was really sick. It got so bad that I became increasingly short-winded, and eventuallycollapsed at school and got sent to the hospital. The doctor ordered me not to swim until he gave premission. Further, he gave my parents a note telling them that I needed lots of bed rest, and that when I returned to school I was to use the elevator, not the stairs and absolutely no PE until I got my strength back.

That didn't happen. I got sent to school anyway. Then my voice quit. Completely. Could not even manage a croak or a whisper. Did not even have the lung capacity to manage a hiss.Got oredered to stay home until further notice and not to even attempt to vocalize at all. The upshot of all that was after I got well, I had no wind any more. It wore me out at school trying to use the stairs because my mother wouldn't sign the form to get permission to use the elevator. I

Eventually, I did start training with my coach, but it all over. I just couldn't breathe like I used to, and learned that the medicine that my doctor gave me to breathe, wasn't allowed for competive swimmers. Not steroids, but still a banned substance. I kept trying to get my time back up to what it had been before. But I couldn't swim and breathe. I cried and cried; that didn't help either. Coach tried to keep my spirits up. We tried to get my timing back. Yet it never occurred to me to take the medication, which did allow me to breathe as well as before, but break the rules.

Two years later, the committee changed their minds and allowed the meds I was required to take. But by then it was too late. That was end of my swimming career. So it still just wierds me out now when I read about the doping. See what I mean?