By Harland Bulwer.
Drugs are Bad, mkay.
So the AFL have finally outlawed AOD-9604, aka Essendon 13. The performance enhancing drug, or peptide, is now officially on the AFL’s banned substance list. But what actually is a peptide? It certainly isn’t a new cola drink being marketed by the stars of the 1984 TV series ‘Riptide’ as first thought by this reporter. No, peptides ‘are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds’. In fact a little bit of digging found that AOD (anti-obesity drug) 9604 isn’t really a peptide. I immediately thought my Riptide friends might have an in, only to be again dismayed that AOD 9604, also known as Lipotropin, is a ‘secretagogue’. And no a secretagogue isn’t a Jewish version of chinese whispers, but ‘a substance that causes another substance to be secreted’. Without getting to into the chemistry weeds, let’s just go back to the acronym AOD. Basically an Anti-Obesity Drug stimulates the body to eat its own fat and build muscle mass. Unfairly, according to the AFL. But why should we care if it is made available to everyone?!?
To look at drugs in sport, we head to Eglington Castle in 1863, when Athur Lillie took snuff before shooting a Sextuple Peel. This caused much outrage throughout the colonies, but there were no clauses in the extensive ‘Laws and Regulations of Croquet’ (published 1863) pertaining to substances allowed on and off the green. The following year, ‘Rules of the Eglinton Castle and Cassiobury Croquet’ was published by Edmund Routledge, stating that snuff cannot be consumed immediately before or during a round. The following year John Jacques controversially was awarded a Bisque in front of his last hoop whilst smoking a pipe, handing him the championship. Again, amidst the outcry for him to be stripped of the title, there was nothing in the rule book about smoking a pipe during play. Hence another re-write of the rule book was needed.
We have seen this in so many sports, where the ‘Laws of Escalation’ have resulted in many changes in sport regulation. It seems every time a substance is included in the banned list another comes straight out that does the same job, or even better. And when the Chinese swapped their female swimmers for yetis in 1994, the governing body couldn’t pull out the rule book and petri dishes quick enough to try and catch these cheats. Thankfully yetis aren’t that smart, well I’ve never seen one win The Chase, and in 1998 one of them were caught with the newly banned substances in their luggage. And might I mention, Lance Armstrong.
The problem is that authorities always seem to be playing ‘catch-up footy’ with banning substances that supposedly give one team/player an advantage over another. Why don’t we chew up the banned list and place it on our remotes and fling it at out tv’s. Surely my viewership is worth watching supermen duke it out against each other, like a team of Lou Ferrigno’s vs a team of Richard Kiel’s. I’m sure gate sales would increase too. Whatever the solution is, it would sure beat my newspaper being filled with a chemistry lesson I didn’t ask for.
