People on both extremes of the discussion about steroids in sports—the moral-panic crowd , in its perpetually shocked innocence , and the hyper-revisionists claiming that performance-enhancing drugs don’t really enhance performance —might want to have a look at Robert Lipsyte’s column about the late Olympic hammer-throw champion Harold Connolly :
In 1991, during a relaxed and lubricated private dinner, I said to Harold Connolly, winner of the 1956 Olympic hammer throw and a perennial world and United States champion: “It’s all timing. If you’d been born later, taken steroids, you could have won a few more gold medals.”
He looked at me incredulously. “You kidding? I was using after 1960. We all were.”
