Sporting teams and individuals are using cutting edge technology to aid performance. Some of it is legal, some close to the edge, and some just plain cheating. 

We’ve already explored in an earlier article what is happening on the national sporting arena, with Essendon being found wanting in its duty of care to its players in an extensive injection program.

It got me thinking about the broader issue and reminded me of a number of interviews I conducted when working as a sports journalist at the ABC. The interviews were with leading Australian sports physician, the late June Canavan, who was tragically taken from us in a plane crash in PNG in 2009. 

The thrust of our talks was that in the search to find the drug cheats, authorities always playing catch-up. In the early days it was anabolic steroids. Who can forget that image of the Chinese female swimmers in Perth. Those massive shoulders would have put Mr Universe to shame. No surprise they were well and truly “on the roids“.

When a test to expose that came about, we moved onto EPO. We all know now that one of the icons of sport, cyclist Lance Armstrong, a man who had inspired millions after he successfully defeated his battle with cancer, and returned to triumph again and again in the Tour de France, was exposed as a cheat. We are fortunate to live in a time when repeated medical breakthroughs and advances have given life and fresh hope to tens of thousands of people who had previously untreatable diseases. Sadly that very technology could be abused by cheats intent on improving performance.

June Canavan believed that technology is being used. “I think it would be naïve of us not to think that there has been some tampering in some ways already. I think that the way we've been using genetic technology to treat many now treatable diseases which were previously untreatable, heralds what can be a way to change various human parameters and physiological capabilities with genetic technology, Dr Canavan said.

“Hormone therapy is being used, and there certainly is a lot of hormone manipulation that cannot be detected yet. And my feeling is that it won't be just injecting in a [inaudible] or a holistic manner, but we'll be actually perhaps using hormones at the very primitive start of their development in the foetus perhaps.”

“We can do, in medicine we use techniques in-utero while the foetus is developing, to change medical conditions. To my way of thinking there's no reason why people, scientists, won't be doing that to change characteristics.” she said.

As medical science further advances that we could see genetically induced champions is a real possibility. 

And if you think that this scenario is a little bit too far into the future, that interview with Dr Canavan went to air on ABC Radio’s PM program in December 2001. Imagine how far the scenario discussed above could have advanced in nearly 12 years!