The Bigger They Come

The harder they fall.

That was the old boxing adage, probably invented by a trainer who saw his man looking apprehensively at the monster standing in the opposite corner of the ring.

It's reassuring news for those of us who would never be mistaken for a brick outhouse, but there is absolutely no truth in it.

The bigger they come, the harder they hit.

And, boy, these days they come very big! Some centuries ago, I played quite serious rugby. I wasn't ever going to trouble the international selectors, but I played at County level and turned out against quite a few of the top-class clubs. I was a hooker and my playing weight was never more than 12 stones. My friend Steve Richards won 9 caps at hooker for England (and incidentally took 12 strikes against the head versus France!) and I swear he never topped 13 stones. Steve Thompson was half as big again as me, and taller, and stronger! For heaven's sake, I would have conceded a stone and a half to Johnny Howard!

There are several ways an athlete can build himself up. Working with the weights, hours in the gym, the correct nutrition; they all have a part to play. But additionally, there are some short cuts. And the most covert of these are steroids.

First of all, we need to understand what steroids are. And why do athletes use them? Anabolic steroids are a synthetic version of the male hormone testosterone. Testosterone in its normal state promotes and boosts muscle development and growth. When it is supplemented with steroids, you have an increase of muscle mass, reduction of body fat, and enhanced endurance. It is used by athletes to try to gain an edge on the competition.

What are some of the side effects? They range from psychological to physical. From a psychological standpoint, they can range from a feeling of well-being to depression, mood swings and even rage. Other adverse psychological effects can include intense aggression and violence.

From a physical standpoint, you can have all kinds of changes. You will have increased muscle mass and increased endurance, but the side effects can include a plethora of problems. The worst being organ damage, and cancer. You can have acne, excessive hair growth or loss, testicular atrophy (shrinking), etc.

On paper, the risks completely outrun the rewards. But this takes no account of the ferocity of many elite athletes' competitive drive to win, and to win at all costs.

This is why they show up on the training pitch before dawn, in all weathers, endlessly hitting the tackle bags, straining at the scrummaging machine, slotting kick after kick after kick. And for the young potentially elite player, every hour spent in the gym or on the training field brings him one step closer to where he may be forced to make a choice; to realise he must turn his back on his dream and all those hours and days he has invested, or decide to take a drug that could damage his heart, kidneys and liver, give him dangerously high blood pressure and cause impotence.

A few months back, I had a business meeting in Naples. My client was in the supplements business - a retailer selling products to enhance sporting performance and muscle mass. His father had been a Mr Universe and had encouraged his son into the business. I met him at his shop, crammed with Creatine and Whey and any kind of strength and endurance enhancers you could imagine. A stream of young men flowed in and out of the store while we talked. "Isn't it cheating?" I asked him. "They don't see it as cheating" he told me. "They consider it no more of an unfair edge than having a better calculator than the guy next to you in your maths class. It's just trying to get ahead"

There's little doubt that these things work. Look at Baseball, currently ravaged by accusations of steroid abuse. Back in 1961, Roger Maris set the home run record of 61 home runs in a season. The record stood untouched for all of 37 years. Incredibly after all this time, in 1998 two players, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, eclipsed the record with 70 and 66 home runs respectively. The next year they hit 65 and 63 home runs. Barry Bonds, who lifted the record to 73 in 2001, hit an average of 32 home runs per season up until 1999, and then averaged 52 per season in the following century, an improvement of over 62%.

All three players along with several other stars are under investigation by Congress. Jose Canseco, a contemporary of McGwire, claimed he had seen McGwire injected with steroids. Bonds was deeply connected with BALCO, a laboratory who gave Bonds' trainer two performance-enhancing substances for Bonds. Bonds did not deny using them, but states that he thought they were to treat his arthritis. You may remember BALCO were also implicated in the banning of the USA sprinter, Marion Jones.

So the drugs are available and sophisticated, and they are effective. More than virtually all sports, Rugby demands strength, endurance, durability and explosiveness. Consequently, can we really doubt that the temptation is available to current players and may well be in regular use?

So how do we handle this? Do we need to crack down hard, right now, with an iron fist, to ensure beyond any reasonable doubt that any player guilty of taking performance-enhancing substances is hounded from the game forever, so that we can look our children straight in the eye and tell them the great players they admire play the game with honesty and integrity.

Or must we accept that the desire to go beyond will not end? That we should embrace the future, rather than fight it? Will there have to be two standards for every sport? Because there is no way a "natural" will be able to compete with a player augmented by drugs, bionics and genetic engineering.

And even if we can find the solution to the harmful side-effects of steroids, who knows what unforeseen side-effects await these new biological techniques?

Perhaps the old adage will prove to be accurate. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.