The example I know best is steroids. A younger athlete, before getting into high-level competition, or during the offseason, does a "cycle" or two of steroids. The effect is to build more strength or size. When the athlete ends the steroid cycle some, but not all of the strength or size is lost, assuming they continue training.
What this means is that they have a foundation to build on that's already above what the athlete who doesn't use steroids has. A year or two down the road, there's absolutely no trace of steroids in the athlete's system, so they easily pass drug tests. However, the benefit was already gained.
So for athletes the limits are time-bounded, not dose-bounded.
That line is a clear one. If you take that line, then no, not every athlete takes performance enhancing substances. But if you count, say, caffeine, then yes, most athletes do. And non-athletes too, FWIW.
“Exercise-induced asthma is the most common medical problem among winter Olympic athletes, especially among cross-country skiers. Nearly 50% of these athletes suffer from the condition, closely followed by short-track speed skaters at 43%. For figure skaters it’s 21%, Nordic combined it’s 17%, and for ice hockey it’s 15%. By comparison, around 9% of the UK general population suffers from asthma.”
The situation is something like "huh, a whole lot of Vietnam draftees seem to suffer from flat feet, somehow our drafting algorithm must have pulled in more flat feet people than exist in the entire population".
None of these guys have asthma: http://www.granfondoguide.com/Contents/Index/3488/dick-pound...
My lungs are currently in the annual process of acclimating to the newly cold fall air. Every year for decades I've been running in October and there are a couple weeks when the temperature crashes from the last encore of summer at 60F/15C seemingly overnight to frosty mornings and 40F/5C runs and the leaves change. I can feel that my legs are fine but I'm breathing harder than usual, and I can literally see on my Garmin that my average pace has decreased but my heart rate is unchanged or elevated. By November my VO2 max will be up a bit and my pace will be mostly back to normal.
Does it feel like I'm breathing through a slimy straw on those first frosty mornings? Yes. Am I in danger of asphyxiating from it? No, and I think that's a critical distinction - some of my friends are, they should use an inhaler to counteract their body's over reaction to the conditions. Can I get over it without medication? Yes. Would I be faster if I had blood salbutamol levels of 800 ug/L instead of 0 and an unrestricted airway? Yes, whether I used it in training to work out at a higher level than I otherwise could, raced with it, or both.
I'd be interested in an analysis of those cross-country skiers if they compared the mucus and muscle response of the undiagnosed and diagnosed athletes with and without their inhalers. Do an EVH test and take an ultrasound of the larynx/trachea to measure smooth muscle constriction and mucus production after 15 minutes on the treadmill at 68F/20C and 50% RH, open the door and do it at 32F/0C and 5% RH, then take a hit of an inhaler and do both again (with appropriate breaks between tests). It could also be interesting to look at the responses of non-winter-sport athletes transplanted from warmer climates versus those who have been working out in those conditions for a few months.
It would be hypocritical not to admit that I occasionally take a pseudoephedrine throughout the fall because my nasal mucus membranes get more productive when raking dusty leaves or running through fields of ragweed - which is, again, pretty normal. To me, the main difference is that suffering through the snot doesn't lead to overcoming it, it's just gross and annoying.
Now all competitors will take additional hormones to reach, but not cross said level. As long as this works, they think of themselves as not doping and levelling the playing field. But they are taking hormones.
World Athletics Female Eligibility Regulations on testosterone levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Athletics_Female_Eligibi...
Case of Caster Semenya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya
If you now answer that it's unfair that the person with naturally occurring higher levels can have it but those with lower levels can't "level" the playing field, well, tough luck. That's just the lottery that gives some people an advantage in certain sports. We all accept that some people are naturally tall and therefore have advantages in basketball. Or some people have naturally stronger VO2 max and thereby advantages in endurance sports.
The competition is how far you can get with the _natural state_ of your body, plus training. Not how far you can get as long as everybody pumps some substances up to a previously-agreed-upon threshold. Those thresholds are just the sad plan-B solution of anti-doping agencies if they can't directly measure doping substances and need to resort to measuring the effects instead. That actually disadvantages those with naturally higher effects.
Nobody would think of restricting maximum leg length, and as long as your legs are not longer than that it's fine to surgically extend them.
In some sports you even have different weight classes. Rowing has 2, wrestling has 6 (olympic), boxing has 8-10 (olympic). The techniques there also differ slightly.
And there are other partitionings of the population too that restrict in who can participate in a competition. You have world championships, but you also have nationals. And regional competitions. And junior leagues. And school competitions.
Then there is also the paralympics.
You can find all that reasonable or ridiculous, but I'm not sure how that's related to doping.
It’s worth noting here that the first Olympic doping suspension was for drinking a beer.
No. I was one and I didn't. And I knew a lot of athletes. I know how most of them were thinking. What you said is simply not true.
Do I think every professional athlete is on PEDs? Yes. Does it make what they are doing any less super human? No. It's like your typical person looking at a bodybuilder and saying, I could look like that if i did steroids. Which is total bullshit.
EditAdd: I did know people who were fascinated about EPO-like medication, and asthma medicine when used without actually having asthma. That was when they were quite young, and that's also a long time ago. I never ran into any of them actually using anything, and they were in the minority - I met just two, and sadly one of them died in a traffic accident before he got to a professional level.
I am sure there is plenty.
It's simply physiologically impossible to accomplish what these athletes are doing without assistance.
Just like arguing "well we only lost the election cause the other side cheated."
In fact, less commercialized sports are much more interesting to watch and participate because they are not just full of over-hyped over-payed over-celebritized evening-entertainment shows designed to milk the audience of most money possible.
If "athlete" ends for you at what's on pay TV and on ads at bus stops, sure. But that's a very limited view of sports. And quite sad, frankly.
Athletes and the public have a different interpretation of what doping actually is. The public thinks of doping as taking performance enhancing substances.
Athletes think of doping as crossing the specified threshold/limit.
I have heard this interpretation on TV from a well connected Dutch cycling journalist ( Mart Smeets ).
Every athlete takes performance enhancing substances.