Volume XXV

This weekend I was introduced to one of the world’s least appreciated of the obscure sports. You won’t find it televised anywhere, though it would be sure to create some delicious drama for some reality television producer to exploit. You don’t have to have any athletic inclination to have fun. And copious amounts of alcohol are involved, so the incentive to have a good time is magnified tenfold. The sport I speak of, obviously, is Champagne croquet. 

Croquet is a sport that really hit the scene in the 1860s throughout England after its introduction from Ireland, where it developed after being transplanted from the beaches of Brittany. A simple endeavor, it is basically the navigation of a maze. Metal hoops are planted at various intervals around the lawn, with an order predetermined for their passage. Contestants then strike colored balls around the course with wooden mallets in turn. The first around the course is the victor. 

The fun comes in the strategy of playing around your opponents. In the course of action, one competitor might carom his ball into an opponent’s so as to strike him or her off course. Ramps and obstacles serve to sweeten the challenge. The vagaries of the average lawn serve to create hops and bounces that leave everyone rollicking with good-natured frustration. Add Champagne, that luxurious sparkling elixir borne of flinty French soil, and all the ingredients are present for an entertaining afternoon. 

I got off work last Sunday about a half hour before noon and stepped outside into the sunny summer morning. My wife picked me up from work, home after returning from a camping trip, and we headed off to our friend’s house for her pre-60 birthday party. The festivities were already well in motion by the time we arrived. The second croquet contest was going strong, with red-cheeked partygoers laughing in the sunlight. Good-natured ribbing greeted every bungled shot; every crisp whack was met with wholehearted encouragement. 

The libations were flowing freely, several drained bottles of bubbly already piled alongside one another on the table. A pitcher of orange juice sat beside, offering anyone who chose the ability to pour a mimosa. My wife and I grabbed a drink and sat back, joking around and getting into the general spirit of mirth and merriment. Eventually we took our own posts for the third and final round of the party. Rounding the yard from one wicket to another, one player after another draining glasses and setting up their approaches, I felt a calming warmth spread throughout my body. 

This is what sports are truly all about -- people coming together in camaraderie and friendly competition. The goal is not just to win, but to have a great time in striving to succeed. Too often the end result is all that we think about as fans. We love our champions to have charisma, yes, but first and foremost they must become champions via victory. The lovable loser is rarely a laurel upon which to rest. But just as often we read one story or another about the unsatisfied top dog, people for whom success is rarely what was expected and for whom a more normal existence is all they long. It can get lonely at the top of the mountain if all one values is reaching the top. In team sports the rarified air of success is easier to breathe, as you have the comrades who helped you reach that point alongside to share in the view. In individual sports the voyage is embarked upon in solitude. Which makes it all the more impressive when we can find joy in those pursuits. We can learn a lot from Champagne croquet... 
 

First, there’s the reality that we’re often far too paranoid about the sanctity of sports. A little bit of fermented grape juice does little to enhance performance, but it can do wonders enhancing one’s enjoyment of an experience. The row against performance enhancement in sports has become a witch hunt which serves only to hinder the enjoyment of a fan’s experiences. I’ve been grappling for some time with a book on the long history of athletic drug use. The history is universal, to be found in pretty much any sport via one substance or another at some point. It is not drug use which has changed -- it has always been there -- but rather public perception. 

For the longest time, athletes were viewed as machines made of meat, and pharmacology was an exciting new field. The two fields were a happy marriage, with each deriving benefits from the other. Athletes would find previously-unheard performance potential, and scientists found test subjects which were willing and able to test the full bounds of the substances. New applications of drugs -- from cortisone to testosterone, strychnine and cocaine to amphetamines and steroids -- were discovered as one sportsperson after another offered him- or herself up as a guinea pig. 

At the turn of the previous century and straight through to the fifties, fans were just as likely as athletes to be taking the drugs which their superstar heroes were using as their miracle cures. Cocaine, strychnine and later amphetamines were all popular over-the-counter cures for any assortment of maladies. Anybody could go down to their local pharmacist and grab a bottle or a tin of these stimulants and be on their way. It wasn’t until the drugs were forced underground by a reactionist society at the same time that the stakes of international sport were being raised exponentially that the attitudes did their about-face. 

The post-war period saw athletes utilizing the increasingly-available variations on amphetamine compounds in everything from baseball and football in America to cycling and track and field around the world. Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four about the rampant use of them in the baseball clubhouse, and his story -- while vilified as a crass money grab by a bitter washed-up ballplayer when it was first published -- has been corroborated by scores of former players. The world witnessed the tragic consequences that can come from their use in 1967, when Mont Ventoux became the deathbed of British cyclist Tom Simpson. 

So that only drove chemistry further along. Doping controls, sadly, don’t eliminate the human nature behind why athletes are using in the first place. Everybody from the most casual fan to the most jaded athlete knows that there is a physical cost which drug use will bill sooner or later. But while the drugs have become more potent, the codification of laboratory procedure allows even conscientious amateur chemists to create less-toxic chemicals. An athlete’s safety is by no means the primary concern behind most people’s clamoring for tougher testing procedures. And by that same token, the amount to which an athlete is deterred from utilizing pharmaceuticals to boost physical performance is only mildly reduced by testing. 

As we’ve seen with doping scandals on both sides of the pond in recent years, most notably BALCO and Operacion Puerto, there are always ways around the best-laid plans to catch cheaters. The East Germans, who dominated women’s swimming in the Olympics and FIS World Championships from the late-sixties through the eighties, were the first to systematically apply the principles under which these later private enterprises operated. 

By developing their own chemicals, a group can ensure their potency, their toxicity and their purity. The East Germans had a ready-made chemicals factory right there in state-owned pharmaceutical concern Jenapharm. Through their cooperation was developed the oral steroid Turinabol and a stream of derivatives. Synthetic testosterone and its balancing-act counterpart epitestosterone were developed as well. For BALCO, the cooperation with underground chemists like Patrick Arnold allowed athletes to best the tests with drugs like tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) which were unknown to testers and, thus, untested. In Puerto, Madrid doctor Eufemiano Fuentes was involved with the withdrawal, storage and reintroduction of athlete’s blood in a systemic practice of homologous blood doping -- the original homemade doping system. 

By forming a relationship with drug testers and having access to the same tests that anti-doping controls will use, a group can ensure that their methods will not raise red flags. East Germany went so far as to earn accreditation for their laboratory from the IOC and to install some of the most advanced testing equipment known to the world twenty years before it would become a requisite part of testing. BALCO and Puerto ringleaders, too, had access to testing personnel and equipment and would repeatedly keep tabs on athletes’ levels. If you know the key things for which the authorities are looking and what will and will not set off the alarms, and you can search for them, you’ll always be a step ahead. 

So where does that leave us? The problem is the fascination with numbers -- and I am as guilty of it as any other writer out there. We’re always looking at this or that record, trying to compare athletes across the generations as if a number here and there can truly encapsulate just how good a player really was on his or her field of battle. But anyone with a modicum of sense knows that any sport has changed drastically as the years have gone by. In football, no longer is the flying wedge the preferred method of moving the ball upfield. The single wing has given way to the spread. In baseball, they’ve tinkered with the pitcher’s mound and the wind on the balls and the materials in the bat. In cycling, the derailleur allowed riders to manipulate gearing and ride more efficiently even as the routes got shorter but punchier. The hierarchy of what each generation values from their sports stars changes. 

Our fascination does not change, though, as the seasons go by and the way they play the games changes. The names of yesteryear return quickly to the mind, even when their numbers fail our flagging recall. The thing that usually sticks most when reminiscing in such a manner, though, is how different the game feels now as compared with those moments. Placing too much emphasis on numbers is a self-serving compartmentalization of an athlete that trivializes his or her true accomplishments and blunts the significance of why we watch. Even when we try to put things in perspective, comparing athletes across eras in relative terms such as how they compared with their peers, we’ve gotten a step closer to the true understanding without really revealing anything new.  

Seeing a record-setting moment is never a bad thing, certainly -- we’ve been able to witness records fall all over the place this summer, to guys named Roger and Usain and Michael, and few would argue that these moments were dull or intrinsically contrived. But it is the look on the athlete’s face as he realizes what he’s done, rather than the number tied to it, which exemplifies that moment. Without the emotion, the number is merely that -- simple mathematics. So too is it with the drugs to which athletes have turned for their boost in performance. Just as the names and faces have changed, so too have the drugs. But the fact that there have always been both the faces and the drugs has not changed. 

I am not the guy to advocate for a complete legalization of anything and everything. But it seems like sports have already to this point benefited from drug use to provide us with endless hours of entertainment. I am also apt to reason that criminalization of substances has historically only increased demand and fueled a rise in bathtub research and development. And when this happens, two things follow -- new substances are discovered, and more people are going to get sick off the ingestion of failed experiments. We know there are a whole range of chemicals out there which can potentially enhance performance. We do not know scientifically to what extent these substances enhance performance -- we cannot place a percentage value on the increase or decrease of performance ability, especially since each person is affected differently by a substance. But we know that benefits are being derived. 

Athletes are already allowed to take supplements, this or that which we deem to be safe and effective and within the rules. But did Babe Ruth have supplements and steroids? No, he was too busy trying to use an extract of sheep testicles to boost his performance in an era which predated them. By ruling that some advancements in science are legal and others are illicit, when in essence they are just variations on the same theme, is shortsighted and blunts the excuses given for such actions. Athlete health is not the concern here, nor is fair play. No, we’re trying to maintain the presumed integrity of already-skewed numbers in a halfhearted and patently forced attempt to mash statistics across the eras. 

So the question must be begged: If athletes have always done this, continue to do this and will continue in the future (if human nature is to be trusted) to do this, what then is our reason for fighting against this? As far back as the ancient Olympics we have evidence of athletes using certain herbal remedies to improve their chances of victory. If we are going to allow some things, we need to figure out those things that are going to most safely and most effectively enhance the enjoyment of those people who truly matter the most in this equation -- the customers who heap adulation on these superstars and fuel team profits through their prodigious ticket and merchandise purchases... 
 

Life is always a calculated gamble. We all put our health at risk with any number of actions we take throughout our daily lives. Athletes have already shown a propensity for testing their own limitations with complete disregard for their physical well-being. So it’s time we figured out what really works best when it comes to making a sport enjoyable for its spectators. To put things in context, Champagne croquet wouldn’t work quite the same were one to replace the sparkling wine with another libation. The effervescence of Champagne compliments the lawn sport to no end, allowing for a giddy time to be spent by one and all. Complete abstinence and prohibition is never going to be a sensible or viable long-term solution to any problem we face in lives, and so too does it go as we circle all ’round this wonderful world...