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Wednesday, 16 August 2006 04:14 |
 | | Mark West |
Pity Floyd Landis. I suppose, as the Rolling Stones sang, thatës like asking for sympathy for the devil. Heës been tried and found guilty in the only court that counts these days, the court of public opinion. And, with its arcane but sovereign logic, that court has also ruled that past champions, including Lance Armstrong, were probably cheats as well.
But there are still some oddities about his case that stand out. The flag that went up on Landisë tests was the ratio of testosterone to a predecessor hormone, epitestosterone; you have to have epitestosterone to have testosterone later. Now, all men have differing levels of testosterone, but the ratio between testosterone and epitestosterone should lie within fairly narrow boundaries.
Landisë
ratio didnët. It was sufficiently out of the norm to call for further
testing and in that further testing, the DNA signatures of the plants
used to manufacture artificial testosterone were found.
The screwy thing
about all this is that testosterone would take quite a while to have
any effect on his performance. Such hormones help build muscle mass and
speed healing; theyëre hence quite popular among body-builders. But
they take a long time to have any effect and Landis just wouldnët have
taken them after one dayës poor performance, expecting a dramatically
better performance the next day.
Landisë
performance in this whole mess hasnët been any better. Heës blamed a
couple of shots of Jack Daniels, then he said his body just ǃÚnaturallyë
violated the rules of biochemistry and now heës saying itës
dehydration. Ah, dehydration; the staple of Hollywood starlets, trying
to get over a binge at the latest trashy watering hole while a movie
crew steams. Perhaps Landis checked in with Lindsey Lohan about how to
handle such matters.
And the various
federations that govern cycling and the groups that do the testing
arenët coming off as paragons of virtue, either. The testing agency for
the Tour de France seems particularly skilled at finding oddities in
the samples from American cyclists and the French press was quick to
judge Landis ÇƒÓ although, truth be told, no quicker than the American
press and at least the French newspapers provided enough detail so that
the reader could actually tell what was going on.
The testing
agency is the same one that has, for the last few years, claimed that
every winner of the Tour de France was using something. The previous
winners were better at press management, but most of them were accused
at some point of doping. Cycling has in essence been a race between
chemists ÇƒÓ some devising tests, some devising new body-building
chemicals.
This whole
scenario, though, is emblematic of a broader trend in our society. All
professional sports trend toward professional wrestling. The cult of
personality in pro sports, the huge amounts of money involved, the
staged entrances, the winks at obvious body-enhancing drug usage, the
flamboyant managers, the noisy color commentators ÇƒÓ all are becoming
pervasive in every sport and all are taken straight from pro wrestling.
Really, the
issue is money. Thereës too much money involved in todayës professional
sports to expect people to avoid performance-enhancing drugs. Thereës
too much money for performers not to fix outcomes, a la the recent
Juventus scandal. If thereës enough money riding on something, people
will figure out some way to rig the outcome.
And, eventually,
as in professional wrestling, every football game will end with a ǃÚhail
Maryë pass, every stock car race have a carefully coordinated quarterly
wreck (not, of course, interfering with ads).
Just like
profession wrestling, a scripted performance will ultimately make the
most money and so thatës what weëll eventually see, in every sport
where big money is involved. The outcomes are predetermined, but the
goal is to make it look good for the rubes in the cheap seats, with
every ending as near a thing as imaginable.
Now, I present
an exercise for the reader. How would the above cultural phenomenon
apply to politics and, in particular, the last two presidential
elections?
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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