When someone mentions performance-enhancing drugs, what comes to mind? For me, it's an image of two 'roided out home run hitters embracing on a baseball field. But as Adrien Broner might have discovered on Saturday night, the world of PEDs—which we traditionally associate with anabolic steroids and human growth hormone—is far more complex. And sometimes the results are instantaneous.
Video from the match appears to show Marcos Maidana ingesting a white pill between rounds of the welterweight title bout before pulling off his stunning upset of Broner. As the Texas Boxing Commission, the Keystone Kops of boxing, investigates what, if anything, Maidana actually ingested—the inquiry is expected to conclude later today—speculation abounds. Inquiring minds want to know: What could Maidana have taken, and how could it have helped him?
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) list of banned substances includes five broad classes of PEDs: stimulants, diuretics and masking agents, growth hormones and growth factors, metabolic modulators, and anabolic steroids. A sixth category, painkillers (like morphine and oxycodone), represents a grey zone, but they are widely considered to enhance performance. Many of these agents require repeated use; PEDs in sports are are typically the long con. But some—like painkillers or stimulants (amphetamine or methamphetamine)—can provide an immediate benefit to a dazed, battered boxer like Maidana. Amphetamine, for example, has been shown to improve stamina, strength, and perhaps most importantly for a boxer, reaction times. (The benefit of taking a painkiller while sustaining repeated blows to the head seems obvious.)
Read More: http://regressing.deadspin.com/
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