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Forum nameOkay Sports
Topic subjectI don't believe her, but I also don't care
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=2739224&mesg_id=2740223
2740223, I don't believe her, but I also don't care
Posted by Walleye, Tue Jun-15-21 11:17 AM
There's nothing intrinsically immoral about the act of taking drugs to run faster. It's immoral because it's against the rules, and in doing it you're trying to gain an advantage that other runners (ostensibly, but that's obviously bullshit) don't have.

So, track fans are left with a few options:

a)play pretend detective on the internet to figure out who's doping and who isn't and decide which performances are legitimate or not based on your own assessment

b)prefer that they permit performance enhancing drugs to eliminate any ambiguity

c)Treat it as a factual matter - using drugs is a problem because a suspension has the same results (potentially) as an injury: you miss some important meets.

I used to choose option "A" but then that got boring and hypocritical. The runners I liked? Absolutely clean. The runners I don't care about? Probably dirty. WADA? Good when they catch the latter group. Bad when they catch the former group.

But the problem with option A is that enlists fans moralizing to solve a problem that the governing institutions of track and field are unwilling or unable to solve themselves. But me pointing at Justin Gatlin and going "bad" and pointing at Christian Coleman and going "good" isn't an actual solution.

So now I choose option C, which is the Ockham-ist approach that the conclusion requiring the least assumptions is correct. Houlihan fucked up (in one way or another) and tested positive, which comes with a suspension. The women's 1500m field just got worse. These are the only things we'll ever get to truly know, so those (and the end results on the actual track) are the only things I'm going to bother caring about.