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Sport and the Press • 85

Discourses of Performance Enhancement

The event instigated speculation by the media on the pervasiveness of drug use within
Olympic sport and the effectiveness of steroids in enhancing performance. Because

the issue is typically kept quiet due to its illegality, it is difficult to gain reliable

figures. Media estimates ranged from ‘ten percent’ to ‘at least half of the 9,000 ath-
letes who competed at the Olympics in Seoul used performance-enhancing drugs in
training’ (Janofsky and Alfano 1988: D31). The uncertainty surrounding steroid use
was also present in speculations about their effi cacy. The discourse from laboratory
officials or testing agencies was relatively cautious, due in part to the ethical restric-

tions on conducting scientific tests with the levels of steroids athletes are thought
to take. Dr. Donald Catlin, head of the laboratory that oversaw drug testing for the
United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the National Collegiate Athletic As-
sociation, said that ‘the sense I get is that more people in the scientific world feel that

they [steroids] do have some perceived beneficial effect on athletes’ (Altman 1988:

A34). The media coverage overall, however, reified the power of steroids. Emphasis
was placed on Johnson’s transformation from a skinny kid to an Olympic-calibre ath-
lete. In contrast to the more reticent scientific discourse, athletes and coaches were

confident that steroids worked. The decision to use drugs was portrayed as a strategy

for levelling the playing field and attaining ‘competitive fairness’ (Kidd, Edelman
and Brownell 2001: 156). Coach Charlie Francis described Ben Johnson’s decision
to use steroids: ‘either he wanted to participate at the highest level or he didn’t. He
could decide he wanted to set his starting blocks in the same place as the others or
one meter behind. It was pretty clear that steroids were worth about one meter at the
highest level’ (Janofsky 1989: D27).
One of the side effects of the coverage was that for the fi rst time, the public were
provided with a portrayal of the performance-enhancing capabilities of steroid use.
Dr. James Garrick, a San Francisco sports medicine specialist, lamented that the no-
toriety given to the Johnson case might increase the use of steroids by athletes at
all levels. ‘I can’t think of a better advertisement for anabolic steroids than the Ben
Johnson thing,’ he said (Kaufman 1988). New York Times columnist George Vecsey
(1989: A29) provided a simple but striking equation: ‘people around the world know
that steroids = medals = money, unless you happen to get caught.’ The media cover-
age consistently reinforced the power of steroids to facilitate performance and led to
the rewards of success in elite sport creating a dramatic, sweeping narrative of sport
and scandal.
This discourse was mixed in with speculations about the effectiveness of testing
and the way to proceed. The media coverage discussed the belief that athletes can
beat drug tests: ‘the cheaters are winning. They know how to beat the tests, and what
I’m hearing from a lot of people is that they have a fantastic new blocking agent that
our labs cannot pick up . . . Until we begin some kind of unannounced testing essen-
tially surprising the athletes, what we are doing is a waste’ (Dr Robert Voy, Chief