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BRANT JAMESWarnings about potential damage to health, careers sometimes go unheeded.
TAMPA - Eric Lawson has looked into the eyes of steroid users and tried to persuade them to stop.
Despite all of his moral and ethical conviction, his attempts to convince them that hazards trumped potential gains, he knew his advice was lost.
"Athletes are not going to understand me or a scientist telling them not to take these things," said Lawson, who has worked with college athletes, Olympians and now with the Lightning as strength and conditioning coach in a 20-year career. "This is a real contentious issue for me, a real struggle for me. But the line between being able to make a team and playing well and not making the team is razor-thin."
Athletes seem willing to risk future health problems for immediate gain.
No one knows that better than steroids expert Bob Goldman, who polls athletes with a Faustian bargain.
"I made up a hypothetical magic pill," he told the Associated Press. "I told them they'd win every competition for five years, but then die from it."
More than half of the respondents told Goldman they would take the pill, he said.
Tests to detect the synthesized steroid THG have led to five suspensions in track and field and reportedly nabbed four Oakland Raiders. Also, 5 to 7 percent of major-league baseball players tested positive for illegal performance-enhancers last season. The NBA and NHL have avoided similar headlines but that would appear to have more to do with their testing policies than the moral fiber of their players. NBA non-rookies are subject to one random test during training camp. The NHL bans steroids, but has no mandatory testing policy for players not in its substance-abuse program.
Lawson thinks the perception that steroids would be of no benefit to hockey players because they rely more on speed and agility than bulk is a fallacy.
"No question," he said. "Steroids now are taken more for recovery that building muscle. If you can rest and recover faster than your opponent, then you have an advantage."
The fact is some athletes are willing to risk their lives and careers to improve performance. And an untold number of sources from Chinese factories to backroom chemistry labs in the United States - "glorified drug dealers, who've found a niche selling to athletes," Lawson said - are willing to furnish designer steroids. So it may be up to the non-cheaters to break the unspoken code of outing their peers who use.
"Do I think we will ever have absolute zero doping based only on drug tests? No," said Dr. Larry Bowers, senior managing director of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. "Some of it goes back to the athletes needing a vested interest in this, too. If they want a clean sport, they need to put pressure on their peers not to do those things and when they do do those things they need to make appropriate authorities aware of that. We're all in this together."
Lawson thinks improved testing is the only viable way to prevent doping.
"The pressure on these athletes to take performance-enhancing drugs and supplements is always very high," he said. "The cheaters are out there and the testing should be very stringent."
- Times staff writer Bruce Lowitt contributed to this report.