Drugs in sport have been around for a long time. Going back to the post war times when the East Europeans were giving their athletes and gymnasts drugs, making most of the women look more like men. In fact I think one of the women actually turned into a man because of all the testosterone she was given. The reason people think drugs are more widely used these days is because more people are getting caught and nothing happens these days without being reported in the media.

The main problem as I see it at the moment is technology. The problem is analogous to the problems associated with computer security. The cheats are always one step ahead of the authorities. The drug testing labs always seem to be one step behind and as athletes or coaches find new drugs to improve performance, the labs need to catch up again. The other problem this brings up is suspicion. If an athlete breaks a world record or has a sudden improvement one season then people are automatically going to think they've been taking drugs, whether they have or not.

In some respects the authorities have gone too far and seem to be banning people for taking substances that occur commonly in products like cold cures. A good case of this is Linford Christie, Britain's greatest ever athlete competing basically for fun for one more year before retiring has a positive drugs test. Do the authorities really think that he would take drugs at this stage in his career. All it's serving to do is tarnish the record of a great man.

I was glad to see that big name athletes being caught for drug taking did not overshadow this year’s Olympics. It was great to see people like Steve Redgrave and Michael Johnson taking the headlines as opposed to the Seoul Olympics, which were all about Ben Johnson's drug taking.

One of the other main problems with drug taking is quite often the athletes themselves don't know and it's the coaches who are giving them the drugs
without their knowledge. A lot of athletes would probably never consider taking drugs because they'd always know that if they won a gold medal say that they'd cheated. However coaches I don't believe have the same sorts of principles.

Drugs in sport can never be considered a good thing and I don't think to get rid of the problem sportsmen and women should be allowed to take whatever drugs they want o make it a level playing field. There will always be athletes willing to take drugs with long term side-effects for their short term goals.