It sucks that no one understands what it's like to be a world class athlete, even the jackass american coach throwing out the comments apparently.
Yes you'll be incredibly hard to find a world class athlete that is clean of all banned substances.
On the other hand, everyone wants to see better and better performances, and these athletes have gone through so much to be the best in their respective endeavors. I don't understand who the IOC, WADA, FDA, and so on think they are to try and restrain athletes from being as good as they want to be.
Obviously safety is an issue. Therefore there should be universal health testing standards in place. In effect this will better protect the athletes than traditional drug testing would. Unless an athlete were to do something remarkably dumb like OD on stimulants pre-event, their blood measures and hormones would be optimized for better performance. You'd also likely see athletes miss less time due to injury.
To the athletes drugs aren't cheating, they are just part of getting better. See, so many of us started at our sports before we even remember. Then one day comes along where it's time to start competing, then later on, the training sessions intensify, eventually you'll spend more hours a day specializing on certain skills, and adding in proper strength and conditioning for your sport. Further education is added in when needed through specialized coaching, video, etc. Somewhere along the line, we tweak our diets to optimize performance. When you plateau again, eventually you add in drugs to the equation.
It's really just the next progression in seeking our own personal best. Somewhere along the line, it became cheating because someone could make money off vilifying it. Then steroids were banned from OTC sales, and suddenly they're mystified and using steroids is illegal AND "immoral."
Fucking brainwashing by the media makes people think that the only people who have used drugs are those that tested positive (or the people that they tell them used --- Barry Bonds). [/end rant]
Okay for the matter of this swimmer. Is she "on" something? Well what do the men's 50m times look like compared to the final 50m in the 100m race? (This is information I legitimately don't have). Comparing the 50m from the platform to a 50m off the wall may be a completely apples to oranges comparison. Like in track, if you compare the later 100m in a 200m sprint, they should always be faster than a 100m time for the same athlete. (Of course, coming off the wall is a change in direction different than that off a dead start in the 100, but like I said I don't have the information.) So the media could be tugging our chain about a non-story on her 50m split.
However if they aren't, and in a 50m race she's actually beat the men's gold medalist - then yes I would sincerely believe that China has found a new doping agent. I'm not sure how much sense this would make, given that they aren't cleaning up in swimming. If they found something they were confident enough to use in their best woman, you better believe she wouldn't be the only one taking it. (or maybe there are plenty of other athletes accumulating medals since Beijing using the same stuff).
OR that "she" really isn't a woman, and has some kind of "chromosome confusion" - really don't know the term. But it has happened in the past with track. There have been women with male chromosomes.
Women's 800m gold medal favourite Caster Semenya takes gender test hours before World Championship race | Mail Online
(I wonder if Semenya is still competing...)
