Tenacity on the Platform

I don't think I've seen a squat as tenacious as Priscilla Ribic's 546lb. world record in 2006. Then I recently saw Tony Cardella squat 826.7 at the 2003 IPF World Championships. (To watch, go here and click on the 125kg squats. Cardella's is 1:50 in.)

It wasn't the heaviest squat of the day for the 275s. Great Britain's Clive Henry squatted 925.9 (starts at 5:06), which had a remarkable context as well. (Henry was on the verge of bombing out, missing his first attempt at 881.8 and second at 925.9.)

But watch Cardella struggle for nearly six seconds to lift the weight, and you will see what tenacity is.

For a Free Marketplace in Sport

So steroids are in the news again.

This time the spotlight is on 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis, who admitted using steroids and other drugs during the 90s. Champion cyclist Erik Zabel subsequently admitted doping before the 1996 Tour.

Given the colossal rigor of the race, is this really a surprise?

As a powerlifter who competes in a drug-tested federation, steroids aren’t my thing. My health and hairline matter to me, so I pass on the needle.

But here’s the thing that many people don’t seem to grasp:

Athletes use steroids because they work.

If steroids cause organ damage, physical deformities, and behavioral problems, they also cause marked increases in recovery ability, training intensity, and strength. This translates into improved athletic performance.

If steroids didn’t work, athletes wouldn’t use them. It’s that simple.

Some top powerlifters have been admirably candid about steroid use:

• “When I reached 40 years of age, it seemed like I just was not retaining enough protein to rebuild my muscles. I wanted to stay on the top, so I chose steroids…I work hard for my power. Steroids gave me the chance to work harder.” (Ernie Frantz)
• “There's no possible way I can train the way I do without taking anabolics.” (Louie Simmons)
• “…I'm not going to be hypocritical and say that I haven't done things.” (Ed Coan)

Numerous elite powerlifters don’t use steroids, however, and the sport has found an elegant solution to the issue: a free marketplace of competition.

Powerlifting has drug-tested federations like the International Powerlifting Federation and non-tested federations like the World Powerlifting Organization. There are also federations with tested and non-tested divisions like the American Powerlifting Association.

That’s how it should work; private organizations arise to accommodate certain athletic preferences. Instead of coercive homogeneity, there is a spectrum of choice.

And those private organizations also have the right to establish certain policies. To cite a policy that to my knowledge has caused no controversy, my federation requires a t-shirt beneath the required singlet during the squat and bench press and prohibits t-shirts with “pockets, buttons, zippers, collar, or vee neck.”

These are the rules of performance. If you show up for squats with a Polo shirt and no singlet, don't expect to participate in a meet.

To extend this to the more controversial issue of steroids, the problem with Riis and Zabel isn’t that they used steroids—it’s that they used for an event they knew prohibited steroids, violating the rules of performance and honorable competition.

The principle of self-ownership means that athletes should have the right to pursue their fullest potential with Deca, HGH, EPO, or whatever. That doesn’t create entitlement to compete wherever they want.

But steroid-using athletes are entitled to form organizations where use won’t be an issue. The evolution of powerlifting shows how this can be done.

Releasing Dissidents Doesn't Mean Reform

There's a scene in Syriana where the CIA agent played by George Clooney presents at a meeting about Iran. An official refers to "students marching in the streets" and "Khatami making the right sounds," to which he responds:

They let young people march in the street and then the next day shut down fifty newspapers. They have a few satellite dishes up on roofs, let 'em have My Two Dads, but that doesn't mean the Ayatollahs have relinquished one iota of control over that nation.

This exchange comes to mind with the Castro regime's release of seven prisoners of conscience including Jorge Luis García Pérez, imprisoned since 1990.

Certain knobs, forever eager to soft-pedal the brutality of the regime, will cite the releases as proof of reform in Cuba. There are four responses to this:

1) Jorge Luis García Pérez and his peers shouldn't have been imprisoned to begin with. They are owed restitution for their immense suffering, and those who perpetrated this suffering must be held accountable for their crimes.

2) The "crime" García Pérez was convicted of, "enemy propaganda," remains. Nothing has changed institutionally.

3) Many more prisoners of conscience remain in Cuba.

4) This month, human rights activists Rolando Jiménez and Oscar Sanchez were sentenced to twelve years and four years for "disrespect" and "social dangerousness."

In 1976, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed of the Soviet Union after the Helsinki Accords, "They're released Plyushch, but continue to lock up others. There you have detente and the spirit of Helsinki."

Now Cuba releases some while locking up others, in this case to end European Union sanctions. The EU's likely response brings to mind another observation by Solzhenitsyn:

The Soviet Union and the Communist countries know how to conduct negotiations. For a long time they make no concessions and then they give in just a little bit. Right away there is rejoicing: "Look, they've made a concession; it's time to sign."...They give one one-thousandth of what natural law should provide--things which people should be able to do even before such negotiations are undertaken--and already there is joy. And here in the West we hear many voices that say: "Look, they're making concessions; it's time to sign."

There are still many voices like that.

Emersonian Israelis

"People in the southern town of Sderot have a choice," begins a recent article in Ha'aretz, "obey the law, or protect their homes against constant Qassam fire [from the Gaza Strip]."

See, municipal regulations prohibit construction of shelters in homes.

But some Israelis, stubbornly concerned for their lives and the lives of their families, are building shelters anyway.

"Good men must not obey the laws too well," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. This truth is urgently apparent in Sderot.

Naughty Henry

Historian Robert Dallek was recently in the news for "revealing" in his new book that Henry Kissinger delayed telling Richard Nixon about the start of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.

While Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger surely adds to the story, Kissinger's withholding has been known for some time. The late Stephen Ambrose noted in 1991 in the third volume of his Nixon biography:

Kissinger was willing, even eager, to take advantage of Nixon's preoccupations [with Watergate, etc.] to ignore the President as he dealt with the crisis. It was two and a half hours after he had the news that Kissinger called [chief of staff] Al Haig in Key Biscayne to inform him that war had broken out. He did not ask to talk to the President. He had already contacted the Israelis, the Soviets, the Syrians, the United Nations, the Egyptians, and Jordan. This set a pattern that persisted, justified by Kissinger on the grounds that "it was not clear that Nixon retained enough authority to manage the manifold pressures about to descend on him." He had no doubt about his own authority.

To quote Borat, "Naughty, naughty!"

Edgar Allan Poe, Muse of Rocky III?

A little known fact is that Sylvester Stallone is a longtime admirer of Edgar Allan Poe. Stallone's dearest unrealized project might be his movie about Poe.

On this note, I recently came across the following passage in Jeffrey Meyers' biography of Poe, about a fight Mr. Masque of the Red Death had when he was a teenager:

...he got into a fight with a heavier boy and was vigorously beaten for some time, before turning the tables and giving him a sound whipping. When asked why he had allowed the boy to beat his head for so long, Edgar explained that he was waiting for him to lose his breath before administering the final defeat! As always, Edgar offered an ingenious explanation of his strange behavior.

Now compare Poe's fight with the climax of Rocky III. Balboa encourages Clubber "I Pity The Fool" Lang to get piñata on him to fatigue the champion. (He earlier lost the title to Lang.) The tactic works, and by the end of round three Lang's getting the piñata treatment.

I don't know if Stallone read about Poe's fight in an earlier biography (Meyers' came out ten years after Rocky III), but it's a cool commonality in any case.

A Good Man, A Good Husband, A Good Friend

"He was a good man, a good husband, and a good friend," recently remarked the widow of late dissident Miguel Valdés Tamayo, whom I wrote about in January. Now the regime that brutalized her husband holds Bárbara Elisa Collazo captive and terrorizes her family.

All she wants to do is leave, but the vicious jerkoffs who enslave Cuba won't allow that.