When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

blog

Doping Versus Blood, Sweat And Tears: What Makes A Champion?

Doping Versus Blood, Sweat And Tears: What Makes A Champion?
Charles McCain
Thomas Dayer


LAUSANNE - Inevitably, any question on the importance of science in sports brings up the topic of doping. “We tend to focus on the cheaters and not enough on clean athletes,” says Swiss judo champion Sergei Aschwanden, bronze medalist in Beijing. “What message do we want to send to young athletes? That doping is required to succeed as an athlete? This will kill the next generation.”

Gregoire Millet, Director of the Sport Sciences Institute at Lausanne University, believes that the new biological-based methods that employ genetic features have changed the calculus: “We’re no longer in a purely pharma-biological approach, which requires detecting the substance. We’re moving towards an approach where any anomaly triggers suspicion and calls for a more specific control."

The practice of keeping samples for eight years is a lingering threat for athletes. For Millet, genetic doping isn’t necessarily more effective: “We don’t really know to what extent it works. Pushing one component would probably break another, but an athlete is a whole.”

The role of psychology

That’s why other methods -- legal ones -- could be taking over. Sky, the cycling team who helped Bradley Wiggins win the Tour de France, is surrounded by scientists. “Science can help establish a strength profile,” says Millet. “It can help the athlete recover better and faster, like with cryotherapy, or training more efficiently by establishing the usefulness of altitude training or a specific diet. And in a few years, miniaturization will make it possible to put captors on athletes’ bodies and know how the body reacts during competitions.”

Still, all sports aren’t equal in the face of science. Aschwanden admits that in judo, the influence of technology on performance is very limited. For him, it’s all about mental strength -- although he admits that what in sports we simply call “experience” can indeed only arrive after a certain age. “Neuroscience tells us that it takes time -- years, up to 10,000 hours of training for pianists for example -- before changes can be observed,” says Michiel Van Elk of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.

Specific capabilities are developed according to different activities. Abasketball player will be more capable of determining the trajectory of the ball, a striker in soccer will perceive the goal wider than it actually is -- a bad scorer will conversely see it smaller.

Despite all the innovations, Van Elk doesn’t think science makes champions. “In theory, we could believe that science alone could determine, according to the qualities detected, toward which sport a young athlete should turn,” says Van Elk. “But it’s just theory.”

For Millet, training remains the most efficient way of improving performance, and a pill will never replace the maximum oxygen intake. “Science will never replace blood, sweat and tears,” he says. “Science can improve aspects of training, but training cannot be in itself purely scientific. Science, by definition, must be refutable and reproducible. Training is not.”

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Migrant Lives

What's Driving More Venezuelans To Migrate To The U.S.

With dimmed hopes of a transition from the economic crisis and repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro, many Venezuelans increasingly see the United States, rather than Latin America, as the place to rebuild a life..

Photo of a family of Migrants from Venezuela crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum​

Migrants from Venezuela crossed the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum.

Julio Borges

-Analysis-

Migration has too many elements to count. Beyond the matter of leaving your homeland, the process creates a gaping emptiness inside the migrant — and outside, in their lives. If forced upon someone, it can cause psychological and anthropological harm, as it involves the destruction of roots. That's in fact the case of millions of Venezuelans who have left their country without plans for the future or pleasurable intentions.

Their experience is comparable to paddling desperately in shark-infested waters. As many Mexicans will concur, it is one thing to take a plane, and another to pay a coyote to smuggle you to some place 'safe.'

Venezuela's mass emigration of recent years has evolved in time. Initially, it was the middle and upper classes and especially their youth, migrating to escape the socialist regime's socio-political and economic policies. Evidently, they sought countries with better work, study and business opportunities like the United States, Panama or Spain. The process intensified after 2017 when the regime's erosion of democratic structures and unrelenting economic vandalism were harming all Venezuelans.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

The latest