Drugs, Performance and Health

The NYT has an article today (Sunday) about a critic of the
steroids-as-power-enhancer argument with regards to baseball:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/sp...tml?ref=sports.
What the article doesn't mention is that at his site Eric Walker, who
worked for NPR then the Oakland A's for a long time, challenges not
just performance claims, but also biological and sociological
arguments as well: http://steroids-and-baseball.com/. It's a
devastating argument that's well worth a read. One point of relevance to
this newsgroup is that it's scientifically established that steroids
help increase upper body strength vs. lower body by a big margin. In
baseball, power comes from the legs and core, steroids don't offer much
help to home run production. In cross-country skiing, especially at the
elite and World Cup levels - and for the rower who wants to jump into
a local race on a flat course - upper body strength and the ability to
use it (power/VO2max) have been found to differentiate racers'
results (the Norwegians' performances in the classical sprint at
Canmore are a good example). EPO as an endurance enhancer is another
matter, which probably wouldn't come up in a baseball discussion.
Thus, there seems to be a valid basis for performance drug-enhancing
limitations in cross-country skiing, but it would be interesting to
see for it the kind of analysis Walker provides for baseball.

RM