Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
Posted by Steve L. on July 16th, 2010 · Comments (2)
I saw Bigger, Stronger, Faster* for the first time ever last night on TV. (Yeah, I know, I’m two years behind the times on this one.) It was interesting – and it does offer some food for thought on the whole PED debate. I found it both educational and entertaining. If you’ve never seen it, and have a chance to catch it, I recommend checking it out.
If it means anything, I haven’t seen it yet either. Despite the media hue and cry performance enhancers, in one form or another, have been around for a very long time.
I saw it for the first time last week myself. Had a few issues with it, maninly that the mainstream opinion on steroids was portrayed to be the sole word of Dr. Gary Wadler.
Sure, let’s take Dr. Wadler’s opinion and line it up against Dr. Fost’s and countless steroid junkies who insist that what they’re doing is perfectly safe. So much for balanced reporting. It would have been nice to hear from the AMA and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Heck, Dr. Wadler wasn’t even given a chance to explain why it would be unethical to test the long term effects of PEDs. That’s probably because his answer wouldn’t have fit the premise of Chris Bell’s script.
That said, the movie did a great job to point out just how ubiquitous PEDs are. My favorite part was when he showed that it was apparently ok for Carl Lewis to cheat but not Ben Johnson.
Overall, I gave it 2 out of 4 stars.