Doping vii
The pill can work as a legitimate kind of doping for well-trained women.
Taking oral contraceptives can increase the body’s blood volume. Extremely fit women, who have the benefit of efficient hearts and excellent circulation, take advantage of the extra oxygen available. The enhanced endurance that can result is very valuable to athletes in distance events like triathlons.
However, there are other ways as well to give female athletes a hormone balance better suited for a top performance. Just make them pregnant.
It is well-known that racing mares do best in the early months of pregnancy, because of their enhanced blood supply. Nobody has tried building pregnancy into a female athlete’s preparation, as far as I know, but it’s only a matter of time.
Wrote Germaine Greer. Alas, building in pregnancy might already have been an accepted form of preparation. In particular, the Communist block was notorious for this, as rumour has it. None of the fetuses were ever born though, as other doping products may have damaged them too much, or else because aborting them was more useful.
So they might as well have never existed.
[x]#749 fan zondag 29 augustus 2004 @ 17:17:17
