Noel King

Do we not?

And so the IOC, which is the International Olympic Committee, they were like,

All the countries were like, we don't want this to happen to us in the future.

Doping was kind of like an open secret at this point.

Everyone was like, everyone does it, but we don't want to be in a position where, you know, the rules and regulations are very unclear to us and what we can and what can't have.

And so a bunch of these international organizations and countries sort of pressured the IOC into creating the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is the governing body that develops regulations for what doping is and isn't.

Yeah, that was actually like one of the big ideas underpinning this thing.

Like you could take all the enhancements in the world, but you probably wouldn't score a point in a game of one-on-one basketball with like Victor Webinyama or something like that.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, but WADA is like a...

WADA is very interesting because their definition of what is and what isn't an enhancement is actually really, really confusing and also very invasive and punitive.

They can basically jump out from behind a bush and ask an athlete for a urine test and a blood test whenever they want.

And one of the athletes who actually competed at the Games this week, his name was Hunter Armstrong, and he's a men's backstroke swimmer.

He made the decision to compete without enhancing at all

because he wanted to keep his Olympic dreams alive and still be able to compete in like sanctioned sporting events.

So doping officials were following Hunter Armstrong around all week before the games to solicit random drug and urine tests from him.

It's interesting that, you know, these athletes don't have a very high view of WADA, but they've been like, they've had like the fear of doping instilled in them very early on.

Like a lot of them have spent their whole careers like not even taking aspirin or something like creatine because they've been scared of it infecting their blood tests and violating their ability to compete.

You know, they would love it to be this big philosophical argument.

But really, it's just an effort to sort of normalize their use even a little bit in the eyes of consumers and like be able to like sell drugs that are widely available on their website that you can try.