Enhanced Games: A black mark on the sport of Swimming
The Enhanced Games was created to allow athletes to take (ingest or inject) whatever they want into their bodies to perform at the highest level possible. The rationale (at least in part) is that some athletes are cheating under the current rules and regulations set forth by the IOC and World Aquatics, and they are getting away with it. So why not let everyone cheat? Let the best cheater win.
As a physician and a swimming coach, the entire notion of the Enhanced Games disgusts me. All the known performance enhancing drugs which (by definition) are known to be effective, and when taken in significantly high enough quantities, are also known to be unsafe. We cannot rely on the swimmers who use these drugs, nor their coaches, to accurately monitor the quantities of drugs being taken nor the adverse effects on their health the drugs may be causing.
With the Enhanced Games, a swimmer’s speed is taking a higher priority over the athlete’s safety. At The Race Club, we believe that the safety and well-being of the athlete should take the highest priority. We learned from training 52 Olympic swimmers that excellent nutrition and taking safe, approved supplements in recommended doses can help the athlete’s performances. We condemn the use of illegal PED’s.
Today, at The Race Club, we teach mostly 8-18 year-old swimmers to get faster and, more importantly, to become better people. We teach all five disciplines of swimming: fundamental technique, dryland, nutrition, recovery and mental training. The Enhanced Games goes against everything we teach. Imagine how the suggestible mind of a young 10-year-old swimmer, dreaming to become the fastest swimmer possible, will be influenced by the Enhanced Games. Shame on those involved with these Games.
Yes, at the World Aquatic and Olympic Games competitions, sadly, cheating does occur. The solution to that problem is not to create an Enhanced Games, putting athletes at unnecessary risk. The solution lies in doing a better job of identifying the cheaters and having them, and those involved with them, suffer significant consequences for doing so.
One of the reasons that the sport of Swimming has attracted so many really good quality people is that it has been a relatively safe and clean sport. Let’s keep it that way.
Yours in Swimming,
Gary Hall, M.D.
If you know the why, you will know the how. Why do we train and why do we compete? At least part of the problem with the proliferation of the use of banned performance enhancing substances is the setting of unrealistic whys. If your goal is to be the fastest in history, it is important to remember that there always is or soon will be someone faster. If your goal is to make the Olympic team it is important to recognize that there are thousands of talented swimmers but only one or two get selected in each event. There is not much difference between those odds and the word impossible. Your whys should be the satisfaction of disciple, friendship, health improvement and personal growth through sport. Otherwise, your how had better include something like illegal enhancers. If world records or Olympic bearths should come your way, celebrate them as the rare circumstance that they are. But examine your why. The wrong why can seduce you down the pathway of a very destructive how that still leads to world records and Olympic bearths for almost nobody. Dreams are fun, and goals are critical to success. Aligning your goals with the real benefits of sports and competition might help avoid the personal catastrophe that some of these “enhancers” can cause.
Timothy