BODYBUILDING INSIDER DISCUSSES DRUG USE

You want to talk drugs, let's start with carbo loading," says Wayne
DeMilia, this least-known commissioner in sports, watching me shovel down
pasta. "The night before a marathon -- this pure, drug-free sport, right?
- -- these skinny guys who've been watching their weight all year are
shoveling down pasta. Make sense? You don't think it would bloat them, make
them sick the next day?"

He pauses, a man who knows how to tell a story, until I stop eating and
look puzzled. He continues: "It makes sense if they are going to shoot
insulin, convert those carbs into energy and keep the sugar level up
through the race with sweet drinks until they collapse at the end."

I say, "You mean to tell me that. . . ."

He shakes his head: "All I'm saying is we have to protect the athlete from
himself, and the top priority is don't put your head in the sand. Look
around, admit what's going on. How do Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa get
bodies like that? When I was a kid, the big body was Ted Kluszewski. His
arms were huge, but he was just big, not defined, no cuts in his muscles.

"We live in a chemical society and the athletes are ahead of the doctors.
You got beta blockers for biathletes. Every time a sprinter pulls a
hamstring in hot weather, I think steroid side effect. How many nights I've
spent in the hospital, telling the doctors what's in somebody's
bloodstream. The only drug that I would absolutely ban right this minute is
diuretics. It can kill an athlete in hours."

Diuretics, which help drain water from the system, also help give muscles
that "ripped" look of extreme definition that drives the audiences of
bodybuilding contests into orgiastic frenzy. Next Saturday, at the Beacon
Theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the hard core will attend "The
Night of Champions," a festival of male professional bodybuilders at their
most ripped.

Bodybuilding is so blatantly erotic, narcissistic and seemingly antisport
(as is, more or less, stock car racing and ballroom dancing, among my
faves) that it can be easily mocked, dismissed or used as a fun-house
mirror for the rest of our games, particularly the righteous ones that
promise character development, networking opportunities and a chance to
represent your people.

Bodybuilding is up front about one of sports' most persistent issues --
drug use. Even its only crossover icon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, admitted to
early steroid use. Several years ago, the 285-pound sculpture, Ronnie
Coleman, put it in perspective for me a few hours before he won the Mr.
Olympia title.

"You think you could take some injections and look like me?" he asked.

DeMilia, a built but not shredded 51-year-old divorce who is raising an
8-year-old son alone in New City, N.Y., is president of the pro division of
the International Federation of Body Builders. His laissez-faire attitude
toward drug use throughout sports does seem self-serving. A case certainly
can be made for athletes who want to stay clean but still competitive, and
some of those who claim the drug wars are lost may be profiting from the
traffic. And yet, there has been so much reefer madness, so many official
lies told, that athletes have good reason to trust only their own
pharmacologists, at least until the genetic engineers arrive.

In the latest turn in the traffic, those moguls of muscle, Joe and Ben
Weider -- septuagenarians who have dominated and defined bodybuilding for
the past half-century through their magazines, equipment and supplement
sales, competitive contests and endorsement contracts -- are trying to cozy
up to Juan Antonio Samaranch. In what seems like a reach for authenticity,
they want bodybuilding in the Olympics.

How the Weiders expect to get their beef through Olympic inspection beats me.

Bodybuilding without all the injectibles, orals and topicals that drain
water, pump muscle, and tighten and polish skin would end up being small
and smooth, the two ugliest words in a lifter's lexicon. On the other hand,
you can never outthink the Olympics, a pseudoreligion created to celebrate
the amateur.

DeMilia is too much the diplomat to engage in my Olympic ruminations. He
would prefer to admit, shamelessly, that Vince McMahon, president of the
World Wrestling Federation, is his promotional role model, although he
takes delight in McMahon's failure to take over bodybuilding.

"He didn't understand the thin line between entertainment and campiness,"
DeMilia said. "Our fans love personalities and conflict and soap opera,
too, but they tend to participate in the sport, which makes a difference.
They go back to their gyms after an event, inspired. So you can give them a
show -- I once had an Egyptian bodybuilder come into the arena on a camel;
boy, was he scared -- but you have to give them real competition, too."

I twirl my pasta into my mouth and onto my shirt, a signal I want to get
back to drugs. DeMilia sighs but complies.

"O.K., these male fashion models, how do you think they get so cut?" he
asked. "When my guys tell you it costs more than $25,000 to get ready for a
big contest, you think they're talking about pasta? Human growth hormone
costs about $1,000 a day.

"Let's find out, scientifically, what can really hurt you, and in what
dosages. Then let athletes decide for themselves if they want to take risks
for the prize. The only way you can truly get drugs out of sports is to
take the money out of sports."