Two days ago, bundled up for a frigid run with my wife, I found myself thinking about my upcoming podcast interview with Bob Bowman. There’s definitely not a meme out there where a woman wonders what her silent husband is thinking about, and it turns out it’s chatting up the coach of two of the greatest swimmers in the history of the sport.
Now to be clear, Bob Bowman has not agreed, nor have I even asked him to appear on the Swim Brief podcast. Nevertheless, I think it’s foolish to start preparing only when I ask him. Instead, I will keep planning this hypothetical podcast.
I often find myself frustrated listening to interviews with coaches, perhaps because they don’t cover the topics I’m interested in. That does motivate me to do my own podcast, since I wouldn’t see the point if I was just rehashing the same questions other people asked.
The question I came up with is probably not one that I would eventually use, but I found a place to put it anyway, here in this blog. I’ve learned that it’s important to have containers for your thoughts, otherwise you risk losing them. You never know when you’ll need them again!
So here goes:
If we accept that doping is prevalent in elite sport
If we believe (and we have no reason not to believe) that ascendant athletes like Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand are not doping
How much of a difference does doping really make?
In the conversation around doping in sport, it often gets boiled down to intractable arguments. There’s actually a growing argument in favor of doping. In case you don’t believe me, check out the Enhanced Games or the prevalence of fitness social media profiles offering “transparency” about their PED use.
But within the more “serious” realm of sports, it’s mostly a given that doping is a problem. Like all problems, to the extent that we can eliminate it, we should.
However, we know, and have known for some time that the ability of people to use PEDs outpaces our ability to detect the use of PED. Testing is expensive, testing is imprecise, and regardless of what anyone tells you about tainted pork burritos, the benefit of the doubt still goes to the athlete.
The moral argument about PEDs goes beyond fairness on game day. In a world where PED use is sanctioned, then the assumption by many is that drugs will become the cost of entry to elite sport. That cost will be paid by young people, many of whom will be willfully ignorant of the long term health consequences of injecting hormones and other biological agents in order for a performance boost.
Because PEDs are stigmatized, many of them are obviously off limits to rigorous scientific study of their effects. There are real ethical concerns about anything that may potentially damage the long term health of users.
For swimmers that are close to a Marchand to dope and not beat him, how powerful can the affect be? Surely, any margin of illicit help is too much, please don’t take any of what I’m about to say as a pro-PED argument. What is interesting is that most people in the sport’s energy would be much better focused on paying attention to marginal efforts that:
They can control
Do not do long term damage to people
Very few other people are focused on (therefore the biggest opportunity for competitive advantage)
As you might guess, I have at least one idea of what I think that is, and believe it or not it goes back to Bob Bowman and a question I probably will ask him.
Coach Fitness
During the 2023 NCAA Men’s Championship, the one before ASU broke through and won, the cameras cut to Bowman and I saw something that I didn’t see during any of the years of Bowman 1.0 (the Phelps era). The coach, now of a second ascendant swimmer, looked like he was having the time of his life.
Even when Bowman celebrated during 1.0 looked more relieved than joyous. No doubt there is immense pressure in being the coach in that situation. Coaches are, in my experience, more competitive even than athletes. That competitiveness often manifests itself in the lie that every good competitor tells themselves:
“I can take ‘em”. Being Bob Bowman means that you will have been scrutinized by your peers for most of your career, many of them looking for the opportunity to one up you or show how they would’ve done a little better.
I think that in between then and now, Bowman has worked really hard on himself. Perhaps the nadir of his career, when it was revealed that he sent an explicit text message to Caroline Burckle, was enough to set him on a different path. Most of us have to hit rock bottom doing things one way before we’re going to change.
The pressure should have weighed at least as heavy this past summer when Bowman was beside the pool deck with Leon. The expectation, and the unprecedented fever of the crowd, would have been enough. Yet Bowman looked again as if he was having a good time.
If you’re a coach, and you’re competitive, consider what setting aside some time and resources for your own development. Even the best in the world, in my opinion, has gained something from not being singularly focused on athletes.
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