The World Athletics Championships, which I call the truncated Olympics will begin in the South Korean city of Daegu in less than 24 hours. This competition is held every second year and in my view, represents the a more accurate view of capability in sporting events than the popular and congested spectacle called the Olympic Games. I was musing about what the probability of world records being broken until I encountered a fantastic piece of sports and science journalism by Edward McClelland in the Slate Magazine.
It tackles the issue of doping in sports today and traces the story of the effect of steroids and related substances on the performance of individual athletes. An interesting point that emerges is that while both male and female athletes have a history of doping in athletics, the effects of doping onf female athletes seems to have endured. It is a curious fact that the average record in athletics events for women is 21 years old while comparable figures for men is one third of that. It raises the interesting finding that in the days before detection could occur, female athletes gained a disproportionately large "premium" from doping than male athletes did. The explanation is plausible because most of the hormones used are male hormones that appear to give a larger boost to women before the reacheds a point of diminished returns.
The argument is very sensibly laid and the fact that male records in similar events have fallen many times more than the equivalent for females lends this theory a lot of explanatory power. However, I am sure that the abolition of the existing records to ensure that they are broken again is an inferior choice. pPerhaps the IAAF should design an award system based on how close any athlete gets to the record that has stood for longer. Besides, while it is justifiable to view suspiciously some records that have endured for long, it would be naive to assume that today's male athletes are not cheating in a way that is not possible for female athletes to do.
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