Introduction
On Thursday I
was inexplicably tired and crashed out in the early evening. My wife woke me up. “Hey, check out this thing in the new ‘New
Yorker,’” she said. I didn’t want to
open my eyes and groaned, “Just read it aloud.”
She replied, “No, I think you should see this.” So I sat up, irritably, thinking, “This
better be good.” What she showed me was
that the magazine had published a letter I’d sent in. There it was, actually printed on the page,
signed “Dana Albert” and below that “Albany, Calif.”
How about
that! To be honest, I wasn’t that
surprised, because I’d already exchanged e-mails with one of the “New Yorker”
fact-checkers. (That’s right, they even
fact-check their mail to make sure they don’t give traction to someone’s misconceptions.) But I hadn’t been very optimistic; I figured fate
would somehow interfere, like some really great letter would show up that they
needed to make room for.
Now, you may
suppose that the whole point of this blog post is for me to celebrate getting
quasi-published in a great magazine. And
it is true that I’m really stoked about this; in fact, I’m thinking of having
some sandwich boards made up so I can stand on a street corner and call out to
people, “‘The New Yorker’ printed my letter!”
But actually, the truth is almost the opposite. Writing in had seemed a futile act, so I
figured as a consolation prize I could at least share my thoughts on this blog. When the magazine did print my letter, my delight
was slightly eroded by the tiny disappointment of having a great blog topic
that I now had no reason to pursue.
So I’ve
decided to turn my consolation prize into a greater examination of the original
topic, which was doping in sports. In
this post I’ll go more deeply into the matter than the confines of a letter to
“The New Yorker” could possibly allow.
Malcolm Gladwell on doping
My letter
concerned an article by Malcolm Gladwell.
Let me start of by saying that I have huge respect for this writer, the author
of (among other things) The Tipping Point
and Blink, both not only
bestsellers but books that deserve to be bestsellers. I’ve eagerly read Gladwell’s “New Yorker”
articles the whole way along. In fact,
he’s the kind of writer who is so persuasive that when I read him, I get the
sinking feeling that I’m outsourcing my brain and accepting his treatises wholesale
instead of merely considering them. Yeah. That kind
of writer.
Given my adulation
of Gladwell, I was excited when, flipping through the September 9 “New Yorker,” I saw his article
“Man and Superman,” about doping in sports.
I mean, this is a topic I know something about. I’ve been a competitive cyclist for over
thirty years, winning a national collegiate title along the way, and have been a loyal fan of the professional sport since I
was a kid. On this blog I’ve written
about the doping exploits of Lance Armstrong, Missy Giove, wannabe bike racers who dope in the name of journalism, and Tyler Hamilton. I’ve laid out (albeit satirical) legal strategies for fallen heroes Floyd
Landis (here) and Lance Armstrong (here). Moreover, I’ve done a (perfectly
legal) experiment to examine the effect, on my own athletic performance, of the
polar opposite of blood doping. Getting to read a Gladwell article on
something I’m so interested in was a tantalizing prospect, especially
considering that the best thing I’ve ever read about doping in cycling was also in “The New Yorker,” back in 2000.
You can read
Gladwell’s article here but I’ll summarize it briefly. He starts
by describing an ageing Finnish man who won seven Olympic medals over twelve
years, and whose hematocrit (i.e, natural red blood cell concentration) is so
high his face is almost purple. He’s a
freak of nature, one of those natural-born athletes who, Gladwell puts it, “carry
around in their blood, by dumb genetic luck, the ability to finish forty
seconds ahead of their competitors.” Gladwell
goes on to compare natural ability with that which can be gained through
enhancement, both surgical and pharmaceutical.
He ponders the oddity that performance-enhancing surgery is tolerated but
doping is not, contrasting baseball player Tommy John’s “bionic arm” with Alex
Rodriguez’s suspension for doping.
Gladwell then
moves on to Lance Armstrong and his illegal blood transfusions: “Before we condemn him, though, shouldn’t we
have to come up with a good reason that one man is allowed to have lots of red
blood cells and another man is not?” Gladwell
describes Tyler Hamilton’s book about doping, and explains Hamilton’s
insistence that EPO doesn’t enable a rider to avoid hard work, but to actually
work harder, thus using (as Gladwell puts it) “science, intelligence, and sheer
will to conquer natural difference.” Gladwell
ends his essay, “Hamilton and Armstrong may simply be athletes who regard this
kind of achievement as worthier than the gold medals of a man with the dumb
luck to be born with a random genetic mutation.”
Frankly, I
was shocked to come to the end of the article with so much of the topic left
totally unexplored. I’d thought that
Gladwell’s challenge to “come up with a good reason” not to dope was the
baiting of a rhetorical trap, so that we could be surprised later by his deeper
insight. But this never comes. Instead, his article left me with the
impression that he really buys this “level playing field” nonsense that some
athletes, and some fans, use to justify or tolerate cheating.
Come up with
a good reason not to dope? How about death?
Oddly, the fact that doping is dangerous is completely missing from the
article. Gladwell seems to suggest that fair
play is the sole reason doping is illegal.
This seemed such a glaring oversight that, upon finishing the article, I
wrote my letter to “The New Yorker” on the spot. I asserted (and it feels funny to be quoting
myself),
Gladwell misses an important point: unlike athletic talent, doping is dangerous. Athletes have died from using drugs like EPO; and infusing blood—sometimes blood that was previously frozen—in a non-hospital environment is perilous. Doping is ethically wrong because it incites competitors to similarly endanger themselves. Banning drugs isn’t just about fairness; it’s about protecting athletes.
My other issue
Okay, so
Gladwell left out the part about danger and death. Big deal, right? But actually, that isn’t my only issue with
his article. (It was, however, the only
issue I could bring up in a very short letter to a magazine.) My other problem with his article is that it views
athletic talent far too simplistically.
It’s
tempting to see talent as a binary matter:
you either have it, or you don’t.
And to some degree, this is true.
Last fall, I watched my daughter, who was eleven at the time, running in
a cross-country meet. One of her
classmates, also eleven, blew everybody else away—even kids two years older
(which can make a huge difference at that age).
This girl ran with incredible fluidity and grace and seemed barely
winded at the end, unlike my daughter who arrived among the last third of the
runners, red-faced and puffing like a locomotive. There is no question this classmate is gifted
in a way that my daughter is not.
My daughter,
of course, found this really discouraging.
It’s natural to think, after such a drubbing, “Why even bother?” It’s surely why a great many kids dabble in
sports but then quit. It’s also probably
a rationale for a whole lot of doping by athletes talented enough to make the
big time, but who feel they aren’t quite talented enough to be the very best.
The Gattaca Fallacy
The refusal
to accept genetic limitations is at the core of the 1997 movie Gattaca.
In the sci-fi world of this film, most humans are genetically
engineered, and those with imperfections are labeled “in-valids” and doomed to a
lower-class existence and menial work.
The main character, Vincent, was conceived without scientific
intervention; not only is he nearsighted, but has a heart defect. He refuses to let this prevent him from being
an astronaut, and undergoes various black-market surgeries so that he can
impersonate another man who has a perfect genetic scorecard but (unbeknownst to
society) is a paraplegic. This movie
makes the case that effort and determination make more difference than genetic
perfection; after all, its hero does succeed in becoming an elite astronaut
once he’s deceived the gatekeepers into thinking he’s perfect.
But there’s
a pivotal scene in the movie that really irks me. Vincent’s brother Anton, a cop, has
discovered Vincent’s deception, and is threatening to expose him. They agree to settle the matter with a
swimming competition on the open ocean.
Anton fully expects to prevail because he’s genetically perfect, a
“valid.” So he’s astonished when Vincent
beats him. “How are you doing this,
Vincent?” he gasps as they thrash among the waves. For the scene to work the moviegoer is
expected to share this disbelief, so he can be properly moved by Vincent’s
response: “You want to know how I did
it? This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.”
The problem
with this scene is that it is, or ought to be, completely unsatisfying to
anybody who has worked really hard at sport.
It’s a mere variation of two simplistic ideas: the initial premise that talent is
everything, and the contrarian notion—redolent of ABC After School Specials—that
if you dig deep enough, and want it bad enough, you can beat a more talented
opponent. Sometimes this is true, but
often it is not, and the movie only glances at the surface of what really
happens in athletic competition.
In my head,
I rewrite the dialogue: “You want to
know how I did it? This is how I did it,
Anton: I fricking trained. I mean, duh!” For this little parable to be satisfying, the
brothers would have to be identically conditioned, which never figures into the
plot. That Gattaca is otherwise a pretty good movie shows that either these
scriptwriters don’t fully understand what goes into athletic success, or don’t
expect moviegoers to. I call this shortcoming the Gattaca Fallacy:
the simplistic idea that everything boils down to a simple match between talent and “heart.” Sure, these are important
elements of success, but there are countless others.
What is talent?
In his
article, Gladwell targets one specific measure of talent: hematocrit.
Hematocrit is a great example of a biological trait that can be easily
quantified. It’s a realm where some
people are certainly more gifted than others.
(And, it’s something that can be modified through drugs or transfusions.)
But there
are other types of inborn athletic ability that don’t necessarily go
hand-in-hand with a high hematocrit: for
example, VO(2) max (oxygen uptake capacity) and lactate threshold
(i.e., how hard you can go before your muscles accumulate too much lactic acid
and you have to back off). Before an
athlete decides he can’t compete fairly against somebody with a higher
hematocrit, he should consider whether his other gifts can compensate. It’s short-sighted to measure one trait and
decide nature has dealt unfairly with you, and that you deserve to correct
this.
An
example: When Jonathan Vaughters, a
teammate of Armstrong, left US Postal and joined Credit Agricole, he was
shocked to discover that the team leader, Christophe Moreau, had a hematocrit of only 39%, but was apparently riding clean. And yet Vaughters had a (putatively)
natural hematocrit of 52, which is so high had a special dispensation from his
doctor—a “hall pass,” as he called it—so that he could pass the doping tests. Clearly, hematocrit isn’t everything; Moreau
was the better rider.
Also, the
notion that doping merely neutralizes genetic gifts is problematic because
responsiveness to drugs is itself a talent.
From the standpoint of doping, Vaughters lacked a certain talent: he couldn’t benefit from EPO the way other
riders could. In the doping arms race,
Vaughters was outgunned. He had this
trait that helped him be competitive, while other riders had different traits
benefiting them. His main gift, thanks to doping, was now
largely irrelevant, while theirs were not.
The fact is, drugs don’t affect everybody equally, so an anything-goes
sport—where athletes are free to use “science, intelligence, and sheer will to
conquer natural difference”—still wouldn’t be fair.
Meanwhile, talent
isn’t always measurable. Some athletes
have a talent for suffering; some for tenacity; some for drudgery (a more
important talent than most fans realize).
Some athletes, though they may have low numbers in the easily measurable
categories, are especially efficient (e.g., a cyclist whose pedaling is more
fluid). Some athletes are better in the
heat than others; some are less fazed by cold.
In addition to his other gifts, Armstrong had a rock-solid immune
system, which is somewhat rare in a sport where everybody is perennially close
to being over-trained and has a body fat percentage in the single digits.
Meanwhile,
talent isn’t always physical. Tactical
instinct, boldness, and psychological mettle are all talents, and depending on
the sport involved, can be just as important as muscular strength and aerobic
capacity. In a perfect, dope-free world,
these talents would compensate for physical shortcomings such as a lack of
“random genetic mutation.” Everybody has
different gifts, some more than others, and you put them all in the pot and
stir.
Success without talent
Let me give
you an example of success without talent.
I am not a classically talented athlete.
I washed up as a swimmer, was always picked last in gym class, and achieved
nothing in my first year of bike racing.
In fact, I didn’t win a race until my fifth year. My hematocrit fluctuates between 39 (which is
almost anemic) and 42 (the low end of average).
Moreover, I don’t have much in the way of fast-twitch muscles, which are
what sprinters have. But over the years I
learned how to really suffer, and I paid attention, and through sheer necessity
figured out how to be more efficient than a lot of other riders. At thirteen, I was the only rider drafting
off to the side in a crosswind; the others lined up right behind the rider
ahead.
When I was
fifteen I raced in a hilly, multi-lap criterium, and got into a three-man
breakaway. (Truth be told, it was not an
impressive field.) I was pretty sure I
could beat one of my rivals, but the other was really strong, especially when accelerating
out of the corners. I wasn’t at all
confident I could beat him in the final sprint.
So with a few laps to go, at the bottom of the uphill section, I said to
the slower guy, just loudly enough to be overheard, “We need to drop this
guy. He’s slowing us down.” This whipped the faster guy into a lather,
and to assuage his ego (and prove me wrong) he went to the front and took this
absolute monster pull, all the way to the top of the climb and for the next
half-lap as well. Once he pulled off so
I could take my turn, I attacked him with everything I had. Stunned, he let a gap open up and couldn’t
close it. Now it was a two-man break,
with the strongest guy off the back. The
point of the story? If I’d been
stronger, or had been doped, I wouldn’t have needed to be clever.
The
interplay of various gifts and abilities—boldness, cunning, strength, experience,
teamwork—is what makes a sport like bicycle racing so fun to watch. That is, until somebody gets too far ahead in
the doping competition and merely bludgeons the peloton to death, like
Armstrong did with his über-doped Postal team (and like Christopher Froome is widely believed to be doing with Team Sky). Gladwell is correct in stating that successful
doping requires intelligence, but doping can also nullify intelligence, along
with other gifts. The race is always
closer, always better when everybody is clean.
If you try to level the playing field with drugs, you’ll sell short the
riders who don’t handle drugs well, the riders whose veins are harder to find,
the riders who are afraid of needles, the riders who depend on savvy or
tenacity, and the riders who have integrity.
The downside of “talent”
On the face
of it, you can never have too much talent … right? Well, I think that’s almost always true. But I think there are a couple of exceptions
worth pointing out, especially as regards the developing psyche of a young
athlete.
First,
there’s a trait that is often mistaken for talent, but is really its evil
twin: precociousness. I’m talking about the kid who, in terms of
physical development, gets a head start on the others and so is able to beat
them at sports. A related scenario is
the kid (often the one with older siblings) who develops that killer instinct—the
sheer will to win—earlier than his peers.
(I’ve seen this in my daughters’ soccer games, where lots of girls are unaccustomed
to acts of aggression.) The problem with
precociousness is that it’s a flash in the pan:
sooner or later the various developmental trajectories converge and what
had seemed to be talent turns out not to be.
I imagine this can be hard on a kid who is used to success but sees it
run dry as his opponents catch up.
(Gladwell
points out, in Outliers, that among
young hockey players, those with birthdays closest to the age-class cutoff—that
is, who started out older than their peers and thus are further along
developmentally—have statistically had more success. Their early promise leads to better coaching,
and higher achievement far beyond childhood.
Thus, starting your kid in school later can give him a boost in school
sports—but I imagine this advantage will erode as more and more parents adopt
this strategy.)
Where I’ve
really seen talent fall short is when its value is overestimated by the athlete
himself. He figures, “I didn’t train any
more than these other guys, but I beat them anyway. I’m just special.” This can lead to a slap in the face when
talent alone is no longer enough. Faced
with unexpected failure, this athlete can be forgiven for underestimating his
opponents’ work ethic, and merely concluding, “I guess I’m not special anymore. I had it, and now it’s gone.” I’ve seen really talented athletes quit
early, and it’s a shame.
In The Tipping Point Gladwell describes the
tendency to erroneously ascribe behavior to fundamental character traits: “Psychologists call this tendency the
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when
it comes to interpreting other people’s behavior, human beings invariably make
the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits
and underestimating the importance of the situation and context.” It’s not a huge leap to extrapolate on this,
to the idea that behavior is analogous to performance, and that situation is
analogous to conditioning. That is, those
with talent, because of their early success, may overestimate its importance
and underestimate the importance of training, effort, and savvy. Thus, talent can interfere with diligence.
Conclusion
I do not understand why innate intelligence and athletic talent are so often assessed so differently. Gladwell, in a “New Yorker” article called “The Talent Myth,” examines the talent-obsessed hiring policies of Enron and asks, “But what if Enron failed not in spite of its talent mind-set but because of it? What if smart people are overrated?” It’s a mystery to me why, in his most recent article, Gladwell never seems to ponder whether athletic talent can also be overrated.
If I were
Lance Armstrong, seeking to rehabilitate my image after my infamous
comeuppance, I couldn’t ask for a better article than Gladwell has written with
“Man and Superman.” But the clean
competitors out there, and the fans who value them, deserve more than another Gattaca
Fallacy. If pro sport has any chance of
being clean, its practitioners (not just athletes but coaches, managers, and
doctors) will need to have a far more nuanced view of talent, potential, and
what a level playing field really looks like.
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