DYING TO WIN 'PRETTY SCARY STUFF'

Olympic Drug-use Probe Fascinating, Disturbing

Watching TV

As it turns out, Ben Johnson isn't such a bad guy. And his sin was not
one of bad judgment or flat-out cheating; all he really was guilty of
is poor timing.

That, in a nutshell, is the assertion of filmmakers Marrin Cannell and
Ted Remerowski, who produced and directed Dying To Win, an hour-long
examination of drugs and sport that airs at 8 p.m. Thursday on CBC's
Witness.

The Canadian duo set out to learn just how widespread the abuse of
performance-enhancing drugs has become in competitive sports. The
conclusions they present in this fascinating documentary are both
instructive and disturbing.

Here's how one coach puts it: "None of the athletes I coach can win
Olympic gold medals or set Olympic or world records without cheating."

The way Cannell and Remerowski tell it, doping has become so
commonplace in athletic endeavours such as track and field, cycling
and swimming that it has become very difficult, at the top levels of
each sport, to find anyone who isn't on drugs.

Not that the governing bodies that oversee these sports would know,
however. As the film points out, less than one per cent of competitive
athletes are ever penalized for using banned substances, even though
in some athletic disciplines, more than 80 per cent of participants
rely on steroids and other performance enhancers.

"Right now, there is no choice," says one athlete. "You have to go on
performance-enhancing drugs if you want to perform at a certain level.
You just have to."

However, this isn't anything new. As the film points out, competitors
in the very first Olympic Games are known to have consumed dog
testicles before their events -- they didn't know why; they just knew
it improved their performance.

Cannell and Remerowski provide a quick overview of the modern history
of drugs and sport -- including the intensive doping programs used by
Iron Curtain countries such as East Germany and the then Soviet Union
to dominate the Olympics in the 1970s and '80s.

Ineffective

The film illustrates how absolutely ineffective sport governing bodies
(most notably the International Olympic Committee) have been at
policing the problem -- and not just because they can't catch
cheaters; in many cases, they simply aren't interested in catching
them.

"The Olympics, as well as TV networks and sponsors, are in the
business to produce and sell dreams, not to expose drug users," says
Dr. Robert Voy, former head of drug testing for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Doping now has graduated far beyond the steroids that fuelled
Johnson's famous 9.79-second sprint in Seoul and eventually led to his
downfall. These days, the drugs of choice are human growth hormone --
for which there is no effective test -- and an undetectable substance
known as erythropoietin (EPO), which boosts stamina and reduces
recovery time but, if used improperly, can thicken the blood to the
consistency of honey.

Since arriving on the scene a little more than a decade ago, EPO has
become the drug of choice for road-racing cyclists, even though 18
young riders have died suddenly of heart attacks or strokes after using it.

Dying To Win delves deep into the bizarre world of sport-related
doping, gathering comments from several people who have made a career
of teaching athletes how to use drugs without getting caught, and
revealing some of the highly unusual methods that have been used to
beat drug tests.

Overall, it's pretty scary stuff -- and, with recent developments in
gene manipulation that have allowed scientists to grow mice with
massive muscles, there is no end in sight.

Clearly, the cheaters are staying way ahead of those who seek to catch
them.

As for Ben Johnson -- perhaps the fastest cheater ever -- well, in the
world of elite-level athletics, it seems he was just an ordinary guy
who was very unlucky, very careless or very stupid.