THE BEAUTY of competition was presented with exceptional
INTERNATIONAL that high-level sports have not been at all good for people's health. We find potentially grave metabolic problems in athletes, and I think that trying to correct these disorders, which is considered as drug-taking, may be medically necessary."
drama to an international audience this year at the Seoul
Olympics. Urine sample tests, replacing the stopwatch and referees, were the decisive arbiter. The following article examines the problem of "performance enhancing drugs" and what it represents more fundamentally.
ALEXIS VIOLET
I RANCO's minister for sport, a 100
• per cent Francoist who was later ambassador to Moscow, Antonio
Samaranch was elected president of the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) in 1980 thanks to the votes of the
USSR, Eastern European and third world countries. A shrewd businessman, he has been eliminating little by little those committee members co-opted for life and replacing them with international-class businessmen, including a leader of the
Krupp group and one close to the big international sporting-goods firm, Adidas.
"money has to serve
Says Samaranch, sports rather than the other way around."
He wanted the Seoul games to be the most successful in the world. Commercially, he achieved that. It was undoubtedly not out of altruism or self-sacrifice that the nine multinationals that belong to TOP (The Olympic Program) and are official sponsors of the Olympic Games put close to $100 mil-
TV re-broadcasting rights amount to about $80 million. It seems that the money is going to Samaranch, who managed to make the IOC a big-time commercial
South Korea's interest in organizing the
Olympic Games was to project itself as a great power and present a "democratic"
show-case. It is evident that it is going to get some benefits from this, among other things by improving its relations with the referees were bought, another was attacked in the midst of a general punch-up instigated by Korean officials, because he had dared to declare one of their people the loser. No holds were barred, Korea had to became the leading Asian nation in sports. That is good for business.
Its methods of training its 400 athletes. were close to a commando-style attack. They were shut up in a paramilitary camp for nearly two years. Chun Ae was struck violently by her trainer. She suffered a broken eardrum. On her return from the hospital, she said: "He was right. He just tried to improve my performance. I am sorry that I was not the best. I must be worthy of my country." Such exacerbated nationalism has not been seen since the Berlin games in 1936.
However, what will be remembered about these games, confirming that sports today are the main socio-cultural spectacle and therefore the best support for advertising, is what was presented as the drugs issue and the apparent firmness of the OC, the modern champion of purity. What was really involved?
Dr. de Lignières, an endocrinologist who participated in a ministerial commission on drug-taking, told Le Monde, "The conclusions have been regarded as disappointing by those who formed this commission. We arrived at the conclusion that drug-taking is a very widespread practice in France, and
Immense pressures on athletes
In the Quotidien de Paris, Dr. Bellocq, who looks after the athletes on the French team, said: "A study has already been done of athletes asking them if they were ready to win a medal knowing that they would die two years later. Half of them said yes. Talk to 25-year-old athletes. They don't understand. Health is an empty word for them. With contracts worth millions of francs at stake, death means nothing." He added, "Frankly, the great athletes have doctors who play a broker's role."
Ben Johnson got $250,000 for a single race at a sponsored competition where there was no examination. The strictness in Seoul seems astonishing. In fact, the so-called fight against drugs was designed essentially to make three-and-a-half billion TV viewers think that top competitive sport is healthy, pure and exemplary. All that is false. It is well known that, among other things, these athletes are subject to frequent hormonal and sexual disturbances. They are stuffed with biological products that have been known about for a long time. This time, the IOC scored some points, but there has already been talk of genetic manipulations practiced on athletes that are
A French sports official, A. Piron, has said, "In France also we have prodigies. You have to find them at the age of 12, and then work differently with the elite and super-elite." Why wait 12 years? Why not select test-tube babies? The show will go on and bring in huge sums of money, with athletes resembling human beings. They will not be Frankensteins. They will be neat and well-brought up monsters. Top competitive sports generates this dynamic; drug-taking is only a consequence of it. *
SEA OLYMPICS USSR and China, which is a very big
All the records were broken: 161 coun tries, 13,000 athletes and 4,000 journalists participated. In particular, the record for security was dynamited. There were no less than 120,000 cops and soldiers to safeguard this festival of "joy and harmony." The Koreans insisted particularly on harmony. The chief organizer, Park Seh Jik, had solid references. He was the head of the "reeducation" camps, where 40,000 people were confined after the 1981 coup d'etat. Some of these people never came back, having been killed by the army.
South Korea got 33 medals, including 12 gold medals. Cheating was elevated to the status of an institution, especially in the body-contact sports. For example, boxing
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International Viewpoint #149 • October 17, 1988
USA
T HE REAGAN ERA is over, al-