I have managed to get through the Olympics without seeing any of it broadcast, but the constant flow of headlines at general-interest web sites makes a total news blackout impossible. That’s how I found out about the big doping scandal in that quintessential Winter Olympics sport, curling.
Yes, a curler competing as an Athlete From Russia, which isn’t competing as a nation because it’s been banned for doping, was tossed out of the Olympics for taking a banned substance. In other words, doping. The story is actually more complicated, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Why, I wondered, would a curler bother taking performance-enhancing drugs? What would they enhance? The sport is basically shuffleboard on ice. Players slide a thick stone disk toward a target. That’s it. It requires no more physical force than pushing the dog off the sofa. I’m sure that like other forms of shuffleboard, including the kind old-school barrooms have, players have to develop some touch, but how would bigger muscles help that?
So I checked with a sportswriter friend of mine, who opened my eyes to how far competitive sports have gone down the road to pharmacopia.
Curlers, it seems, are no longer paunchy, cigarette-puffing codgers. They want to be athletes, and they have the buffed-up, swimsuit-calendar bodies to prove it. Archers take beta blockers to lower their heart rates, helping steady their hands. And of course looming in the background is Russia, where the national anti-doping agency was actually in charge of doping the nation’s athletes.
Which brings us to the irony of the curler’s ejection: Nobody is sure the drug he took does anything to enhance performance. It’s banned because the if the Russians were using it, they must have had a reason, and it can’t be a good one. Trust, but verify. And don’t trust, either.
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” That’s the Olympic creed, and it never appeared more outdated than it does today.