Wimbledon 2010: Do Tennis Players Take Steroids?
As the 2010 Wimbledon tournament is currently underway, there is a certain amount of speculation regarding drugs and tennis players. That speculation rests on the question of whether they use performance enhancing drugs such as steroids or not. Over the years, there has been a trend seen in tennis players: they have started to become more muscular and bigger in size.
All this is pure speculation, because no one can prove whether they are on performance enhancing drugs or not without testing them. At the moment, the governing bodies of tennis do not force their players to get tested for drug use. It is strange that they do not enforce this as a rule, because performance enhancing drug use is rife in almost all sports.
A lot of chatter seems to suggest that many people are thinking about a certain issue in tennis and drug use at the moment; Serena Williams on steroids. She is being used as an example of the many tennis players who have become very muscular over the years in the game. It seems Serena has been building muscle mass for some time now. An increase in body fat has also been noticed in the tennis number one and along with the increased muscle mass, it has led people to think that she has been using steroids, (Castro, M., 2008).
Others have stated that since tennis is an aerobic and athletic sport, it does not make sense for a tennis player to build so much muscle mass naturally. If anything, playing in a sport such as tennis should make a person leaner and thinner, and not more muscular, (Tennis Has a Steroid Problem, 2010). The more muscular women tennis players are sometimes compared to the East German women's swimming team that competed in the 1970s.
The story of the East German women's swimming team is a very sad one indeed. This team of swimmers dominated the swimming world for almost twenty years until the Berlin Wall fell in 1990, and after that, the sordid truth of the team came to light. The women of the team were given up to 30 steroid pills a day, even before they started to compete professionally. They were given the pills without knowing what they were taking for many years, (Steroid-Abuse, 2010). The saddest part of this tale is that these poor women did not know what they were being given, and later on in life, it caused them complications such as health problems and problems with getting pregnant.
This issue brought the problem of women sports stars using steroids to the forefront. Now the question comes to light whether the WTA (Women's Tennis Association) checks for drug use in women's tennis. It almost happened that the WTA started to test for steroid use, but a few players objected to the testing. These players were Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati. Serena Williams also refused to have mandatory testing done for the 2004 Olympics where she won gold, (Cody, B., 2010). Maybe there are those out there who say that Serena should be given the benefit of the doubt, and it is not her fault if she is a muscular woman. Fair enough, but then why would she refuse to be tested for performance enhancing drug use prior to the Olympics? The only way this issue will ever be settled is if the younger Williams sister is given a steroid test by the WTA. Until then, everything anyone says will just be speculation.
If she has nothing to hide, she should be in the clear. Refusal casts continuous doubts on her not having taken steroids during her career. Other tennis players are also suspiciously large and muscular, and this brings us to the point that the governing bodies of tennis, the WTA included, should introduce a mandatory once-a-year drug test for all its players. Then maybe one day we will know for a fact whether Serena Williams and top tennis players have actually taken steroids, or was it all pure speculation and finger pointing.
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