This is a brief post due to the fact I've been on jury responsibility plus I've were given some net issues.
Last week I did a post called If It's Good Enough for the Deer... when the PGA Tour and the World Anti-Doping Agency (usually shortened to just WADA) announced that deer antler spray wasn't an illegal drug after all. I think most people missed that post because I put up two posts that day. I have two reasons for bringing it back up.
First, it turned into basically a rant about the slippery slope of drug checking out -- a trouble that I don't think is being taken significantly enough. As I pointed out in that put up, IGF-1 is discovered within the milk you purchase on the grocery save. And not simplest is IGF-1 difficult to test for, however no person has decided at what level IGF-1 ceases to be a part of a wholesome weight-reduction plan and turns into instead an illegal drug. This begs the question: Is it illegal for athletes to drink milk? This is a sloppy manner of checking out for drugs.
Which brings up my second point -- namely, that drug testing is dangerously close to becoming a witch hunt. Don't misunderstand me. Drug testing has become a necessary part of modern sports. But between sloppy regulatory examples like IGF-1 and the inherent problem of athletes whose bodies may naturally manufacture a greater amount of, say, testosterone than their competitors (is their testosterone level illegal, even though it's natural?), how do we define "illegal drug levels" in a way that's fair to all athletes?
The legal suit being brought against the Tour by Vijay and his people is the natural result. Again, let me be perfectly clear -- I don't like this move. It smacks more of revenge than justice. But it's the inevitable result of the previously-listed problems, and we're probably going to see more suits like this. Vijay's suit won't solve anything beyond polarizing people on both sides of the issue even more than they are now.
What WADA and the diverse sports activities companies need to do is re-evaluate the entire procedure for determining what certainly constitutes doping -- what particular capsules and what tiers of those capsules genuinely bring about a performance raise, in addition to how they'll determine whether an elevated level of such tablets is herbal or brought on illegally. I assume they also they need to reconsider along with pills which include caffeine and IGF-1 which can be not unusual in normal foods. Down that way lies madness.
To be blunt, this entire component is simply getting stupid. Somewhere alongside the line, calmer heads will have to be successful. But I'm afraid I do not see it coming any time soon.
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