Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 03, 2013 Sports
This is not about mega-star Jack Nicholson, or that magnificent film, ‘Something gotta give’, which found Jack in love with one woman, Dianne Keaton, while dating, and bedding, her daughter, Amanda Peet.
That alone, I expect, would require several drugs – Aspirins, “Big Blue V” or even “Classic Master C!”
This is about our real world, where young men and women are so enthralled, enthused, and encouraged, in so many ways, with being top professional sports stars, and given so many opportunities, much too quickly, and much too young, that they regularly fly totally out of that ring of the centrifuge!
Oh, if you had ever done physics or chemistry in high school, you would know what a centrifuge is! It is a machine designed to spin so quickly, on a central axis, that it causes, by centripetal acceleration and sedimentation principle, denser material to settle to the bottom of the test tubes!
Anyone doing drugs, performance or otherwise, especially for sports, is absolutely dense alright!
Even before I was playing cricket for Guyana’s Youth, in 1970, aged 17, my father used to say something that was so simple, yet uncannily funny and absolutely true:
“You must not have excuses for doing badly. You must not do drugs, be drunk or unfit. Simply, you must do badly, naturally! Only idiots take these into their bodies!”
That stuck. I never did drugs at all!
Indeed, to this day, after a chaotic episode Christmas Day 1969 episode, I do not even imbibe. I do not need to! My father was right. No-one needs alcohol or drugs to be stupid. You can be that too, naturally!
Luckily for West Indian cricketers of all ages and eras, there was never any real drug culture, even if there were always rumors that some players actually did do drugs, situations that I could never confirm.
As a West Indian cricketer, I was tested three times for illegal drugs from 1976 to 1983. As an aviator, from getting my Commercial Pilot’s License in 1981, to now, I have been tested every six months! So!
Yet, many young sports-people simply consume drugs and alcohol, almost hungrily losing themselves in that temporary but supposedly all-conquering high! Totally unbelievable! What a desperate waste!
Information from doctors I know suggest that common every-day drugs like cocaine, marijuana, even “speed” – amphetamines – do not enhance sporting, even sexual, performances in any way. They simply discombobulate the brain. Yet, strangely, so many still stupidly indulge in these practices!
This diatribe has come about as, last week, there was an inquest into the death, last year, of a good English cricketing prodigy, Surrey’s Tom Maynard, which found that he was as souped-up as a Formula 1 racing car, when he was either hit by a train, or electrocuted by the rails; in either case, fully dead!
I have known Tom’s father, Matthew, for a long time, as he played, well, for Glamorgan and England. I have not seen him since the tragedy of his son’s death, as he is, sensibly, keeping his head low, but I could not even try to understand how a father feels when such a talented spirit is extinguished this way.
According to George Dobell, senior correspondent, ESPN-cricinfo, “Maynard had significant amounts of alcohol and traces of illegal drugs in his system at the time of his death.” Incidentally, he was only 23!
Dan Jones, writing in London’s Evening Standard, asks that 10 million dollar question: “Why are so many young sports men (and women) drawn to the business of boiling their brains and pummeling their bodies with drink and drugs? Rationally, it makes no sense. Drinks and drugs do not help with sport!”
We have all heard of England footballer Paul Gascoigne, Ben Johnson at Seoul’s Olympics, Marion Jones at Sydney’s Olympics, even Lance Armstrong, whose several winnings of the toughest bicycle race in the world, Tour de France, have been found to have been severely performance-drug enhanced; but why?
Simple answer to that stupid rhetorical question: Money; lots and lots again; of mullah, severe dosh!
How much is really enough? If you already have twenty millions, how will another ten millions help you? It is not even considered greed after such situations. It is simply being asinine!
Soccer players in England get US$225,000 per week. Basketball and American Football players, and boxers, get millions per year, yet many are broke, some due to bad investments, but mostly from drug use and trying to continue the high life, within ten years of leaving their professional sport.
Something must give, when a young American man, in university, before he is 20, if offered gazillions, because he can jump, leap, hit or tackle!
Someone must look after these young people too, for they simply, from sheer ignorance, cannot look after themselves! But, they have an excuse!
I cannot find any excuses or reasons for experienced grown men and women, having, legally, trained hard – I actually ran at least 15 miles every day for 15 years, training and bowling – would allow themselves to be destroyed by the consumption of drugs and alcohol. Enjoy!
JAGDEO ADDING MORE DANGER TO GUYANA AND THE REGION
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