Este post de Malcolm Gladwell sobre dopaje está realmente bien. «Man and Superman. In athletic competitions, what qualifies as a sporting chance?«. El libro que cita y recomienda, “The Sports Gene«, de David Epstein, tiene una pinta muy buena también.

El artículo es largo, pero merece la pena. Y es puro Gladwell. Arranca con historias de atletas con condiciones naturales increíbles, con ejemplos de superación y con anécdotas. Lo mezcla con ciencia, con glóbulos rojos y el tendón de Aquiles de los kenianos.

Todo para llegar a la reflexión de fondo: «We want sports to be fair and we take elaborate measures to make sure that no one competitor has an advantage over any other. But how can a fantastic menagerie ever be a contest among equals?»

Es muy interesante la reflexión de Tyler Hamilton que aparece al final sobre en qué consiste exactamente doparse.

«People think doping is for lazy people who want to avoid hard work,” Hamilton writes. For many riders, the opposite was true. «EPO granted the ability to suffer more; to push yourself farther and harder than you’d ever imagined, in both training and racing. It rewarded precisely what I was good at: having a great work ethic, pushing myself to the limit and past it. I felt almost giddy: this was a new landscape. I began to see races differently. They weren’t rolls of the genetic dice, or who happened to be on form that day. They didn’t depend on who you were. They depended on what you did—how hard you worked, how attentive and professional you were in your preparation«.

El artículo entero, aquí.