Pollster: How Many Tennis Players Are Doing Drugs?

Announcing our new feature: Pollster. A weekly poll on subjects from the serious to the frivolous in the game of tennis. This week we look at drug use.

Richard Gasquet and Guillermo Canas lost in Rome today but I’ll talk about that tomorrow. Right now I’m a bit exhausted. The Hollywood Hills fire is less than five minutes from my house – the house I lived in last year had to be evacuated – and I’m a bit worn out from the worry.

However, I do have enough energy left to introduce our new weekly feature: Pollster. Yep, every week we’ll put up a new poll and you can poll to your heart’s content (the poll is located on the right sidebar). If you have any suggestions for new polls or complaints about them or even a bit of appreciation, just leave a comment. Here goes.

In the 2003, the Balco Scandal uncovered wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs in track and field and baseball. Recently, a former New York Mets employee named Kirk Radomski pleaded guilty to distributing drugs to dozens of professional baseball players between the years 1995 and 2005. Radomski has been working undercover for Federal authorities since they raided his home in late 2005.

Baseball started testing for steroids in 2003 and suspending players for positive tests in 2005, yet Radomski was doing a hearty business until his guilty plea. One of the substances he distributed was human growth hormone and there is no test for that, but he also distributed steroids and amphetamines. Only fifteen players have received suspensions so far which means there are a number of players doing these substances and not getting caught.

Testing for performance enhancing drugs does not appear to work very well. Those players who do get caught are probably ill-informed and unsophisticated users. So here’s the question:

Baseball players appear to be using drugs without getting caught. How many tennis players use performance enhancing drugs: 5% 15% 30% 50%?

Note: I’m not objecting to steroid use necessarily, I’m more interested in the cat and mouse game between players and anti-doping organizations. It’s a modern version of cops and robbers with the players barely, but more or less successfully, staying ahead of authorities. We spend a lot of time and energy testing for performance enhancing drugs but it’s not clear that it works.Richard Gasquet and Guillermo Canas lost in Rome today but I’ll talk about that tomorrow. Right now I’m a bit exhausted. The Hollywood Hills fire is less than five minutes from my house – the house I lived in last year had to be evacuated – and I’m a bit worn out from the worry.

However, I do have enough energy left to introduce our new weekly feature: Pollster. Yep, every week we’ll put up a new poll and you can poll to your heart’s content (the poll is located on the right sidebar). If you have any suggestions for new polls or complaints about them or even a bit of appreciation, just leave a comment. Here goes.

In the 2003, the Balco Scandal uncovered wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs in track and field and baseball. Recently, a former New York Mets employee named Kirk Radomski pleaded guilty to distributing drugs to dozens of professional baseball players between the years 1995 and 2005. Radomski has been working undercover for Federal authorities since they raided his home in late 2005.

Baseball started testing for steroids in 2003 and suspending players for positive tests in 2005, yet Radomski was doing a hearty business until his guilty plea. One of the substances he distributed was human growth hormone and there is no test for that, but he also distributed steroids and amphetamines. Only fifteen players have received suspensions so far which means there are a number of players doing these substances and not getting caught.

Testing for performance enhancing drugs does not appear to work very well. Those players who do get caught are probably ill-informed and unsophisticated users. So here’s the question:

Baseball players appear to be using drugs without getting caught. How many tennis players use performance enhancing drugs: 5% 15% 30% 50%?

Note: I’m not objecting to steroid use necessarily, I’m more interested in the cat and mouse game between players and anti-doping organizations. It’s a modern version of cops and robbers with the players barely, but more or less successfully, staying ahead of authorities. We spend a lot of time and energy testing for performance enhancing drugs but it’s not clear that it works.