The Steroid Predicament

When Jan first began to lift and for five years or so thereafter, she was often approached by friends who would suggest to her that she should give steroids a try, that they would really help her lifting. As she progressed in the sport—by 1977 she was setting records in every competition she entered—other friends began to ask her what steroids she was taking and would, I think, only half believe her when she said she never used drugs. Following the first women's national level championships in '77, Jan began to assume more and more administrative responsibility in the sport.

In the late '70s Jan and I began to see more and more evidence—deepened voices and dramatic increases in upper-body strength and muscle size—that suggested some women were using steroids. Jan reacted to the shock of these startling transformations by strengthening her resolve not to use the drugs and to look for ways as an administrator to minimize their use in women's powerlifting. She was frightened by reports indicating that female rhesus monkeys given male hormones early in their pregnancies delivered female offspring that were dramatically abnormal. Their play was more aggressive, their clitorises were much enlarged and their labia majora were partially fused, as if to form a scrotal sac. Jan decided in her own case to fight the drugstore with the food store. In 1981 she reached a body weight of 230 pounds, at which she established a world record in the squat of 545.5 pounds, which still stands. Even though no official testing was then being done, Jan, on more than one occasion, insisted on urinalysis and a lie detector test to help make her desired point, that steroids aren't a necessity for world-class lifting.

At the end of the year, tired of shopping at the Lots To Love Shop, she decided she would quit competing for a while, lose weight and concentrate on her administrative duties. (She has since returned to competition, setting several world records in the 148-pound class.) It was at about that time that things began to heat up among U.S. powerlifters on the drug-testing question, in large part because of fires being lit here and there by Jan and the women's powerlifting committee, at least 90% of whose members favor testing. Last week the women lifters finally received the go-ahead to test for all steroids at their next national championships. Yet the same predominantly male committee approved only voluntary testing for those men who exceed current world records at the next men's national championships.

It's apparently in the nature of things for an adversarial relationship to develop between those entrusted with ensuring fair play and good health in a sport and those whose aim is to prevail. It didn't take athletes long to latch onto testosterone and to learn to time their anabolic steroid use and thus beat the tests. Now certain drug gurus smile knowingly about ways to evade any new net the testers may throw.

Rumors abound. One of the substances considered to be a hot ticket on the test-proof train these days is a powerful and frightening substance known as human growth hormone (HGH). A conservative three-week supply of the stuff has a street value of around $500, and the word now is that the only thing holding a lot of athletes back from using it is money. In the past, HGH had to be extracted from the pituitary glands of human cadavers, although our brave new world will soon have genetically engineered growth hormone available, at a fraction of the current costs. The natural stuff is already widely used by elite athletes in the strength sports, and there apparently is no easy way to test for it.

Professor Beckett of Chelsea College and the IOC medical commission takes a balanced view of it all. He says, "What we must always remember is this. It is a never-ending process. We can never eradicate drug use among athletes, but I think if we stay on our toes we can continue to develop procedures that will cause the athletes to use smaller amounts of drugs near the competitions, and this will promote fairness and health. That's our job. Consider the alternative."

Some people feel the current testing procedures and the will to enforce them are inadequate to the task of curtailing drug use in any meaningful way, and both bodybuilding and powerlifting have splinter organizations dedicated to using various types of lie detector tests to screen athletes. The largest of these is the American Drug Free Powerlifting Association. It has about 500 members and operates out of Bay St. Louis, Miss, under the direction of Brother Bennet of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. Conversely, in powerlifting, some people have tried to start new federations with rules that would specifically forbid testing.

My own feeling, for what it's worth, is that the ergogenic aids an athlete chooses to use are his or her own business, up to a point. If a person wants to take 2,000 mg of anabolic steroids a day along with 3 cc of testosterone and say to hell with the risk-to-benefit ratio, I think that person should have the right to do so, outside official competitions. But after seeing what I've seen over the past five years or so; after hearing Jan console so many young girls who call weeping to share with her the frustrations they feel as they face competition against women who have risked virilization and God knows what else to achieve the strength advantages conferred on them by the steroids; after seeing some of my friends wounded in body, in mind or both by steroid use; and after seeing many good people leave powerlifting because of their unwillingness to either take steroids or compete with the odds so against them, I think it's not unreasonable to tell those who wish to take steroids, "Look, use the drugs if you must, but don't stand in the way of reasonable drug testing in your sport. Either back off enough to be able to pass the IOC test at the big competitions or else stay out. Join another federation if you like, but you shouldn't expect the right to come in loaded against someone who's clean. If you wonder why, ask yourself why it would be unfair to begin a chess game with three queens to your opponent's one."

Over a year ago Jan wrote an ad hoc medical committee report recommending that testing be done at the forthcoming men's and women's national powerlifting championships. She stated the case well, I think. I hold with it.

"It is simply not fair," she wrote, "to allow one athlete to use a substance which both research data and empirical observation suggest is effective in producing significant strength gains, when a second athlete for medical and/or ethical reasons chooses not to use that substance. The nonuser of steroids has a right to expect the administrators of a sport to support policies which protect both fairness in competition and the good health of the athletes."