2008 Woodie Awards
Beauty of Sport Totally Sullied by Drug Scandal
Linda Robertson
Issue date: 12/8/04 Section: Sports
MIAMI- The beauty of a baseball player's home-run swing or a runner's stride across the finish line makes the heart pound with joy and amazement.
The ugliness of Jason Giambi injecting his buttocks with steroids or Marion Jones sticking a needle full of human growth hormone in her leg makes the stomach turn with disgust and disillusionment.
Breathtaking grace?
Sprinter Kelli White said she ingested such a smorgasbord of drugs that her skin broke out in acne, her voice turned to gravel and her arms and legs looked like Popeye's. Her body was so confused she was menstruating every other week.
Finely honed talent?
Barry Bonds, who says hard work enabled him to reach his thick physical peak at age 37, admitted he used mysteriously named substances called "the Clear'' and "the Cream,'' but it never occurred to him that they might be illegal steroids, and he never bothered to ask what was in the liquid and lotion that entered his temple of a body.
Relentless competitive drive?
To improve his hitting, Giambi relied on a cattle-fattening drug and a female hormone. To become the world's fastest man, Tim Montgomery put on his spikes and opened his medicine cabinet.
Sports may someday be killed by absurd salaries, escalating violence or simple oversaturation.
THE REAL KILLER
Or death could come in pill form. Juiced-up, broken-down athletes will no longer be able to perform. And fans who once marveled at the feats of their fellow humans will get bored watching chemically-enhanced mutants smash ever more meaningless records.
New leaks of grand jury testimony in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) case and BALCO founder Victor Conte's confessions on TV's 20/20 have served to confirm the badly-kept dirty secret of sports: Athletes cheat and get away with it.
As more grotesque details emerge, there's no use trying to deny what's been true for decades: A "level playing field'' does not exist- only one sloping downhill for doped-up runners and one with closer fences for doped-up baseball players.
The ugliness of Jason Giambi injecting his buttocks with steroids or Marion Jones sticking a needle full of human growth hormone in her leg makes the stomach turn with disgust and disillusionment.
Breathtaking grace?
Sprinter Kelli White said she ingested such a smorgasbord of drugs that her skin broke out in acne, her voice turned to gravel and her arms and legs looked like Popeye's. Her body was so confused she was menstruating every other week.
Finely honed talent?
Barry Bonds, who says hard work enabled him to reach his thick physical peak at age 37, admitted he used mysteriously named substances called "the Clear'' and "the Cream,'' but it never occurred to him that they might be illegal steroids, and he never bothered to ask what was in the liquid and lotion that entered his temple of a body.
Relentless competitive drive?
To improve his hitting, Giambi relied on a cattle-fattening drug and a female hormone. To become the world's fastest man, Tim Montgomery put on his spikes and opened his medicine cabinet.
Sports may someday be killed by absurd salaries, escalating violence or simple oversaturation.
THE REAL KILLER
Or death could come in pill form. Juiced-up, broken-down athletes will no longer be able to perform. And fans who once marveled at the feats of their fellow humans will get bored watching chemically-enhanced mutants smash ever more meaningless records.
New leaks of grand jury testimony in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) case and BALCO founder Victor Conte's confessions on TV's 20/20 have served to confirm the badly-kept dirty secret of sports: Athletes cheat and get away with it.
As more grotesque details emerge, there's no use trying to deny what's been true for decades: A "level playing field'' does not exist- only one sloping downhill for doped-up runners and one with closer fences for doped-up baseball players.