Beyond biking . Drenched in drugs Beyond biking Blood doping Steroids 'n kids 'roid rage Mark McGwire signs autographs and baseballs. Steroid sales skyrocket Cycling may have invented the wheel, so to speak, but not the idea that doping could make you quicker. Athletes in plenty of other sports are similarly caught in pharmacological follies.
Swimming seems to be an area of rampant steroid use.
Irish swimmer Michelle Smith won three gold medals at Atlanta, but was suspended for four years for tampering with a urine test. Four Chinese swimmers were expelled from the 1998 World Championships for taking diuretics, often used to mask drugs in urine samples. Like a hanging in the morning, the public humiliation of bike racers has had a marvelous ability to concentrate the minds of big-time sports organizers. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was forced to turn in a gold medal 11 years ago. Drug use in elite sports has been epidemic at least since the 1960s.