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Curator, author | Wooden boy
Caption | The Yomiuri Shimbun knotted
This article was first published on the tiger sniff young content public account "That NG" (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the face, stories and attitudes of today's young people.
Among the top Olympic athletes, the proportion of asthma patients has reached a staggering order of magnitude.
After the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, statistics found that a quarter of the athletes in the winter Olympics had asthma, and the Norwegian team was nicknamed the "Asthma Dream Team" because it prepared 6,000 asthma medicines for 250 team members.
"Figure Skating Prince" Yusheng Yusei, tennis star Serena Williams, "Flood Girl" Fu Yuanhui, football star Beckham... In the list of asthma athletes, we are familiar with the names listed.
This is really a bit counterintuitive news, isn't exercise the most able to strengthen the body? Why are athletes more likely to develop asthma?
Therefore, some people suspect that this is a cheating method of "reasonable use of the rule". Under the pretext of taking medication, athletes can avoid doping tests and achieve higher results.
Is this really the case? In this issue of Tiger Radio, four anchors got together to talk about asthma, doping and human limits.
Why do top athletes love asthma so much?
vol. 181
Anchors: Cucumber Soda, Mu Zitong, Liu Xiben, Teacher Zhao
Recording, editing: CC
From the data alone, the asthma prevalence of athletes is indeed ridiculously high.
Among the average adult in China, the prevalence of asthma is only 4.2%.
A study of five Summer and Winter Olympics between 2002 and 2010 found that 8 percent of Olympians suffered from asthma.
Long-distance running, cycling, swimming, cross-country skiing and other racing projects are the hardest hit areas, according to the University of Kent, nearly half of the athletes engaged in cross-country skiing are suffering from asthma symptoms.
Cyclist Simon Yates, who suffers from asthma
And although it is a serious respiratory disease that can be fatal, asthma has not become the DeBuff of athletes.
Asthmatic athlete, who has achieved many good results in international competitions, Yu sheng has dominated the Olympic men's figure skating event for two consecutive years, and South Korea's "swimming prince" Park Tae-hwan won the first swimming gold in The history of the Olympic Games for South Korea. Since 1992, 70% of all norwegian medals in skiing have been won by asthma athletes.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 17 percent of cyclists and 19 percent of swimmers suffered from asthma, and they won 29 percent and 33 percent of medals in those events, respectively.
Japanese athlete Hiroshi Shimizu "Asthma Power": It is because of asthma that I won the Olympic gold medal
Too outrageous prevalence rates, brilliant competition results, where in the world is there such a good thing? No wonder some people suspect that there is cattiness hidden in it.
Some people speculate that asthma is just a blind spot, hidden, is the abuse of stimulants.
Athletes who are not sick are hiding from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) under the guise of "asthma".
It is not an easy task to evade WADA detection.
In the long-term game of cat and mouse with athletes, WADA has accumulated a wealth of combat experience.
In the International Standard for the 2022 Ban List, issued in January this year, WADA listed 11 classes of banned substances and 3 classes of banned methods, involving more than 350 stimulants.
From psychostimulatory cocaine, to muscle-stimulating anabolic steroids, anesthetic analgesics, growth hormone, and then to the "self-blood refusion" that uses the athlete's own blood to stimulate the number of red blood cells, only you can't think of it, no WADA can't find it.
In addition to testing before and after each major event, WADA will also carry out random inspections from time to time, commonly known as "fly inspection", to prevent athletes from using banned drugs in their usual training.
It can be said that unless black technology that far exceeds the current level of detection, the use of stimulants will be a very risky behavior.
There is only one exception, and that is a condition that is allowed by WADA to take a specified category of drugs.
Asthma is one of them.
The beta-2-stimulant contained in asthma medications is one of the banned drugs.
A study by the Western Norwegian University of Applied Sciences noted that it can improve sprint performance (3%) and strength performance (6%) for athletes without respiratory diseases.
However, after the WADA study, it is believed that it has only a therapeutic effect on asthma patients and has no function to improve athletic performance, so it is allowed to be used by asthmatic athletes.
The intention is naturally good, but it also means that if the athletes who are not sick are successful in pretending to be sick, they will receive a "compliant medication" pass.
In addition to Norway's "asthma ski team", the United States's "asthma swimming team" is also famous, and these formed asthma teams are difficult not to make strange associations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin once said bluntly: "Since they are all sick, it is better to go directly to the Paralympic Games!" ”
However, other studies also have different views.
There is an explanation for the gathering of asthma patients in swimming programs: swimming is a good exercise that can cure asthma, and many young children with asthma will be recommended by doctors to contact swimming. The more contact, the more possibility of entering the career path, in the final analysis, it is a matter of probability.
It is said that Yusei first learned figure skating because his parents learned that the humid and cold air of the ice rink helped relieve asthma symptoms.
Frequent asthma in cross-country skiing is thought to be an occupational disease.
Studies have found that the longer Norwegian cross-country skiers participate in this sport, the higher the probability of developing asthma. John Dickinson, coach at the University of Kent's School of Sport and Exercise Science, believes this is due to the nature of the sport.
Dry air passing through the respiratory tract at high speed is one of the important causes of asthma. Usually, when we breathe, the air will pass through the humidity and heating of the nasal cavity, and in cross-country skiing, athletes have to collect at high speed movements, inhaling a large amount of dry and cold air through the mouth. This may be what causes them to develop asthma in large numbers.
It's hard to tell whether asthma and exercise are chickens or eggs or eggs.
But athletes, especially those in countries with a high degree of professionalism, have indeed never given up the loophole of WADA and used "external forces" to obtain better results.
In the history of international anti-doping, there has been an interesting face-punching case.
In 1988, Canadian sprinter Johnson beat American Lewis 9:79 to win the men's 100 meters. As a result, the drug test was detected as a doping after the game, which became a huge scandal for a while.
Lewis took the moral high ground, vigorously accusing Johnson of dishonesty and repeatedly calling for stronger anti-doping efforts in the public sphere.
As a result, in 2003, a doctor in the United States revealed that between 1988 and 2000, more than 100 American athletes, under the cover of the authorities, illegally used doping and cheated in international competitions.
And the name of "anti-doping standard-bearer" Lewis himself is also prominently listed.
At this year's Beijing Winter Olympics, Russian figure skating actress "K Bao" Vallieva was also caught in the doping storm.
During the Beijing Winter Olympics, she was accused of testing positive for the Russian Figure Skating Championships she participated in last year, and once almost ended her Winter Olympic journey ahead of schedule.
Russia itself, because of the "dry and unclean" of collective doping in the ice and snow project, was kicked out of the Olympic family by the International Olympic Organizing Committee.
You may have noticed that at the Beijing Winter Olympics, when russian players received the prize, the Russian flag was not raised on the spot, but a strange flag, that is, the flag of the "Russian Olympic Committee". The Russian flag disappeared from the Olympic arena precisely because of doping.
Stimulants are banned, of course, because they do a lot of harm to the human body.
@ Liu Xiben learned through the old news of "Ma Jiajun" that stimulants are by no means a panacea without side effects, but at the cost of overdraft of life.
The long-term harm caused by doping to athletes is innumerable.
The Bernese Miracle of 1954 was a bloody case.
In the final of this year's Men's World Cup, the "Dream Team" Hungary kicked the Federal Republic of Germany team in the first half and led 2:0. As a result, in the second half, the Federal Republic of Germany suddenly rose up with divine help and achieved a 3:2 earth-shattering reversal, known as the "Berne Miracle".
But just three months later, players Walter, Lahn and Kubshi contracted jaundice, and as many as eight of the players had to be hospitalized that winter. A few years later, several players died of cirrhosis.
It was later learned that during the intermission of the day, the West German team members came with a stimulant, which was speculated to contain ephedrine that seriously damaged the liver.
Why is it that athletes are still eager for doping, knowing that they are injured and the ban is so strict?
@Teacher Zhao found that according to interviews with athletes in some anti-doping documentaries, athletes themselves may not think that taking doping is a scandal worthy of shame.
"If everyone eats me and I don't eat, I will fall behind."
One player who was forced to interrupt his career after being diagnosed with illegal medication said that the doping problem seemed so trivial in the face of the huge fame and fortune that could come with winning the medal.
"Higher, faster, stronger" is the goal that the Olympic Games have been pursuing, but it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve this goal.
After all, there is an upper limit to human physical energy, and it is impossible to break through the limits of natural evolution and undergo qualitative mutations in a few hundred years.
Yu Yusuke's challenge to the 4A is certainly admirable, but his record so far seems to prove that Coach Mission's prediction that "4A exceeds the limits of human physical fitness" is not wrong.
As can be seen with the naked eye, the gap between athletes in athletics and swimming is getting smaller and smaller, and the victory and defeat are only between milliseconds.
@Mu Zitong sighed that the record breakthrough of Olympic athletics in the future is not to become an infinite extension of the decimal point.
From Popeye to Captain America, the Super Soldier Project in World War II, and the Super Saiyan in Dragon Ball, we always have an infinite yearning to break through the limits of the human body, but manpower is sometimes poor.
When athletes, these human beings who are at the forefront reach their limits, is the price paid for that small step of progress really worth it?
In the Live Olympics, a technology always makes @Cucumber Soda feel sorry.
On the swimming and athletics tracks, in front of the athletes, there is always a yellow line that they can't see themselves, which represents the world record. The athletes are always chasing after that line, like a hopeless rush.
Victory, on the other hand, is nothing more than the next yellow line.
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