LA Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games after failing a test for performance enhancing drugs. My 92-year-old father asks, "So, will the Dodgers have to give back their league-leading 21 wins?" Ha, ha, the old guy's such a kidder.
That means baseball's two highest paid players, Alex Rodriguez and Ramirez, have both been exposed as drug cheaters in recent months.
I think we've really been looking at this from the wrong direction. The question should no longer be "Who's on the juice?" It should be "Which athletic hero isn't?"
Hmmhmmhm ... that's a good one ...
Phil Mickelson?
Charles Howell III?
I dunno ...
The basic problem is that spectator sports largely exist as exhibitions of masculinity, which can now be legally purchased without a prescription at any drugstore in the Dominican Republic.
That means baseball's two highest paid players, Alex Rodriguez and Ramirez, have both been exposed as drug cheaters in recent months.
I think we've really been looking at this from the wrong direction. The question should no longer be "Who's on the juice?" It should be "Which athletic hero isn't?"
Hmmhmmhm ... that's a good one ...
Phil Mickelson?
Charles Howell III?
I dunno ...
The basic problem is that spectator sports largely exist as exhibitions of masculinity, which can now be legally purchased without a prescription at any drugstore in the Dominican Republic.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
I'm pretty sure John Daly has never done roids, but he sure has done allota others!
ReplyDeleteHow is John Daly not on this list? How is he not first on this list?
ReplyDeleteHmmm...
ReplyDeleteLatino? check
Freakish stats? check
Links to a trainer associated with performance enhancing drugs? check
*lbert P*j*ls? nahh.....
Phil at Augusta a few weeks ago.Let's face it: the judicious use of steroids makes men bigger, stronger, faster and better looking with practically no down side. Tell me again why professional athletes shouldn't use them? For that matter, tell me why your family doctor shouldn't be prescribing them at controlled doses?
ReplyDelete--Senor Doug
Speaking of golfers and juice, I met Tiger Woods in the UK in 1998 (I saw him on the course in a tournament and I also saw him in a Tesco during the tournament where I stood within a few feet of him). I would say that the celebheights estimate of 6'0.5" is dead on for him and back then he was a wiry 155 lbs. I saw him in a tournament last year and he was absolutely jacked. He looked more like an NFL d-back than a golfer. He must be at or close to 200 lbs. of solid muscle packed on a fairly small frame.
ReplyDeleteSenor Doug wrote:
ReplyDelete"For that matter, tell me why your family doctor shouldn't be prescribing them at controlled doses?"
OK, we've got between 2 and 2.5 million people in jail already, a large percentage of them for violent crimes. If steroids suddenly became more available than they are now, would the rate of violent crime go up or down?
[Jeopardy music]
Craig Counsell's your man:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/turns_out_craig_counsell
When do we get a guest post from Grandpa Sailer? He was a teen when FDR was elected, so he probably has some interesting recollections about the Great Depression, etc., that might be timely to hear now.
ReplyDelete- Fred
Holy Cow! I don't watch much golf, less than an hour a year, but that picture of Mickelson at Augusta is scarey. I had only ever seen the flabby Phil like Steve linked to. How old is he again?
ReplyDeleteExtremely interesting TED talk on cheating and its in-group virulence. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html
I think the situation as described by Dan Ariely in the TED talk is exactly what we are seeing in pro sports.
Let's face it: the judicious use of steroids makes men bigger, stronger, faster and better looking with practically no down side.Perhaps. But the point in sports is not to use them "judiciously."
ReplyDeleteRamirez was banned for using Viagra!
ReplyDeleteViagra!
How in the heck does that help a guy in baseball?
I just don't get it.
Ramirez was suspected for having elevated testosterone levels, and then banned for taking a *female* fertility drug that is a masking agent.
ReplyDeleteFor all of you who are so sure John Daly never took roids maybe you should take a step back and realize athletes are paid vast sums of money to perform and everyone is susceptible to PED's. I'm not saying he's still on Dianabol but look at this picture and tell me he wasn't on them at some point in his career.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.prosportswrap.com/images/john-daly-shirtless-image.jpg
"He looked more like an NFL d-back than a golfer. He must be at or close to 200 lbs. of solid muscle packed on a fairly small frame."
ReplyDeleteUnfounded.
Tiger just grew into a man - how old was he in 1998. Everyone develops differently. I weighed about 180 until I was in my late 20's. After going in the military I was at 205 in four years.
Tiger is a pro athlete - what else does he have to do than work out and train?
I had never heard of that substance but if it has a high estrogen component it is consistent with something that juicers would take after going off their cycle.
ReplyDeleteThe rules are the rules but I do wish him the best.
I have made *a few* mistakes in my life so I can't judge him. I feel blessed that the national media wasn't around to cover them ;)
Ryan
The problem is that in sport after sport, we are approaching the limits of natural human performance (natural in the sense of not being augmented by prosthetic enhancements--technology updates basically--or enhanced by pharmaceuticals).
ReplyDeleteThese limits can be seen in sports in which performance is strictly quantitative in a single isolated aspect (sprinting, throwing things, lifting things, etc), but it's present in other sports as well. World records progression in event after event are showing the classic log curve S shape as the asymptote of ultimate human performance is steadily approached.
Steroids are used in sports because they can help athletes escape the rigors, the constraints of the terrible looming fact: we're nearing, at or beyond unenhanced human performance in almost every sport we play in any numbers for any length of time.
The Usain Bolts are just the exception that proves the terrible reality of the Universal S curve.
And the point, pace Glaivester, in sports is to use steroids "judiciously" precisely because the sport's demands provide an objective upper limit on how much to use (with the exception of bodybuilding): if beyond a certain usage point they don't help performance, that usage point will not be exceeded.
Athletes are going to continue to use "drugs", technology and anything else--brain gyms, meditation, rosary beads--that they think will help them do what they've dedicated their lives and health to doing: being better at something than some other guys.
Health concerns? Pah! Those are for losers. Steroids and other pharmacological enhancements are here to stay. Good thing, I say.
Steroids make you faster and stronger (provided you keep up with your training). But some sports acheivements require some form of accuracy. A 500-yard golf drive isn't any good unless you can limit it to exactly where the green is. A quarterback who can throw a 90-yard pass isn't as useful as a QB who can throw a 40-yard pass to exactly the right spot. (Though a really quick receiver can make "the right spot" a bigger target.)
ReplyDeleteAre there performance-enhancing drugs which help with control, not just speed or strength?
Great Blog Steve,
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing as your Dad. I really would like to see the Dodgers try to revoke Manny's contract on a morals clause issue. They don't know what kind of player they will be getting in two months, hopefully he wouldn't be pregnant but that is all they can hope for. If they play 500 ball from here on out they have a good chance of winning that division and they would have a ton of money freed up to strengthen their team in August(calling Jose Guillen). Legally, I don't if they can get out from under that contract but the PR victory would be huge.
Not to be confused with Thurston Howell III.
ReplyDeleteSox manager Ozzie Guillen said something last year that has stuck in my craw,or at least somewhere in the vivinity of my craw,I am not really sure exactly where the craw is located,all this time,it pissed me off so:he said something to the effect of,"Gee a lot of Latin ballplayers are being pulled in for steroids..." Ok,so far so good,but then he made a wrong turn,"I wonder..are they picking on the Latins??" Lacking the juevos to address the more likely thought:these Latins sure take lots of drugs!This thought can be expanded further,questioning if maybe lots of bad things happen in Latin countries and latin hoods because maybe the Latins arent always saints??What an idiot;and you can bet he lives in a WHITE WHITE neighborhood,where he is no doubt loved like a brother!
ReplyDeletesomething i've been working on for a while, steve, is why basketball players do not take drugs.
ReplyDeletei also note the huge, HUGE, disparity in punishment between baseball and american football, versus track, swimming, wrestling, boxing, and MMA.
you're pretty much simply allowed to use drugs in baseball and american football. you can come back the very same year, they don't take your numbers and statistics away, and your team keeps all of it's wins, including championships.
complete opposite in many other sports. you lose everything, including your reputation. american football players don't even have their reputation damaged by taking drugs. not like this is anything new for black american football players, who literally can do anything and not have their reputation affected.
so football is probably the best sport for drug users.
i also note that drug use is more common outside of the US. american athletes are probably the least likely users.
ReplyDeletesteroids were invented by nazi scientists in the 30s, and proliferated throughout europe before coming to the US in the 60s. even then, americans were slow to start using them. they were quickly adopted everywhere else, rapidly expanding into china and latin america. the idea that they constituted "cheating" was a theme mainly present in america.
i deal with a lot of sports science people from around the world at the olympic training center in colorado, and most of them have the attitude that if you are not cheating, you are not trying.
a lot of the MMA guys from outside the US are on drugs, and it's extremely likely many of the jamaican sprinters are users as well. dara torres, the american swimmer, is 100% for sure a user, but her and her doctor husband are some of the most sophisticated cheaters around, with access to all resources.
jody, how likely do you think it is that Usain Bolt is a user? I don't think there's anything wrong with using steroids (see my previous comment), so I'm not putting Bolt down when I ask the question. The fact is that most or all, IIRC, of the men who've run under 9.90 seconds for the 100m dash, sooner or later were implicated in drug use. A drug-free Bolt would therefore be that much more of an outlier against the log S-curve of human advancement in the 100m dash.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that every time I mention the slowing advancement in the sprints in support of my general thesis about reaching human limits, people say, "Well what about that guy who ran so fast in that race somewhere? You know, him." If all the Jamaicans are pretty well certain to be users, that would help explain Bolt's incredible running...and his rapid weight gain of 20+lbs of muscle in the time just before the run.
"Are there performance-enhancing drugs which help with control, not just speed or strength?"
ReplyDeleteNicotine, caffeine, pseudoephedrine or generic equivalent...I have a distant cousin who is a sniper. He swears by those. However, you obviously have to find the ideal dosage. "Jittery" is bad when you are sitting around waiting to line up a shot. All legal and easily available as well.
"Unfounded.
ReplyDeleteTiger just grew into a man - how old was he in 1998. Everyone develops differently. I weighed about 180 until I was in my late 20's. After going in the military I was at 205 in four years.
Tiger is a pro athlete - what else does he have to do than work out and train?"
I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article about Tiger when we was bursting on to the scene which talked about his strength and conditioning program when he was at Stanford. It noted that he could power clean 315 lbs and bench 265 lbs. - not bad for a 155 pounder with long limbs. It appears he was doing some serious lifting from the start. From an article I read in Men's health a about 2 years ago, it appears he underwent his physical transformation from wiry to 155 pounder to an NFL safety-like physique in the period a few months in his late 20s. It's not definitive proof that he's a juicer, put it is suspicious, especially since he seems to have made drastic changes in his body quickly when he was already doing a pretty serious power training program. Also, the article commented about how insane his workouts were and how little recovery time he needed (including doing huge lifting workouts in the morning before tournamnet tee-offs). Quick recovery is also a sign of juicing.
Anthony asked:
ReplyDelete"Are there performance-enhancing drugs which help with control, not just speed or strength?"
Yes, anabolic steroids are artificailly synthesized testosterone. Testosterone can have effects on the brain. It improves reflexes, hand-eye coordination and visuo-spatial perception (and accounts for some of the gap between men and women in these measures things). So, juicing may do more than just make you bigger, faster, and stronger with better recovery time.
Also, olympic shooters and archers, as well as pro-golfers, often take beta blockers to make their hands steadier. (Professional musicians do this too.)
Jody said:
"something i've been working on for a while, steve, is why basketball players do not take drugs."
Are you sure about this? Look at an ESPN Classic game from the 1980s or early 90s. They're not the same animals running up and down the court. The difference in bulk and muscularity with current NBA players is just as pronounced as you see between baseball players from then and now. More scientific training and nutrition probably account for some of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if performance enhancing drugs also play a role.
Most of those WWF/WWE wrestlers dying at young ages appear white to me.
ReplyDeleteTiger on the juice? Maybe, maybe not. I gained 35 pounds of lean body mass in my early 20's without steroids so it's possible.
ReplyDeleteSooner rather than later, prescribed steroids will be an integral part of anti-aging therapy for men. All the hobgoblins people parade around about steroid use would appear to be associated with bodybuilders taking massive doses.
Off-topic, but I think there has been a real paradigm shift in palliative care in the past decade. I had a family member die a very hard death in a hospital and they wouldn't get him any morphine. Nowadays, I have heard from a couple of tragic cases in my circle of acquaintance that once you elect hospice care under most insurance plans, they'll ship you the brain candy FedEx.
--Senor Doug
"Tell me again why professional athletes shouldn't use them?"
ReplyDeleteAsk Jose Conseco. His system is so messed up he cant even get it up any more. Or the many other athletes who died way too young from steroid use.
"Tiger on the juice? Maybe, maybe not. I gained 35 pounds of lean body mass in my early 20's without steroids so it's possible."
ReplyDeleteEarly 20s is different from late 20s/30ish. In their early 20s, some men are still maturing physically. However, if you're over 25, have been doing intensive power training since college, and then all of a sudden put on a ton of muscle, it looks rather fishy.
i doubt woods used any sports drugs. if he did, he did not need to. for a 6 foot tall man, a 30 pound bodyweight increase from age 18 to age 28 is completely possible in a sport where the competitors are not typically large or weight trained at age 18. the average man can make that kind of improvement. woods is within the normal range for a 10 year improvement in size and strength.
ReplyDeleteas for drug use not being widespread among basketball players, i'm fairly confident about that. which all-time legend recently tested positive? none of them. positive drug tests go something like this: football, baseball, track, football, baseball, swimming, football, baseball, weight lifting. the winner of the track 1500 at beijing tested positive and was stripped, but not a single one of basketball players at the games came up as a user. i'm not sure why, but sports drugs do not seem to offer basketball players the improvement that they offer athletes in other sports.
when you watch NBA games on ESPN classic from 25 years ago, you're seeing what basketball players look like without any weight training at all. they're skinny and slim. some of them are practically human stick figures. i believe the average NBA bodyweight increased 20 pounds between 1984 and 2009. the same phenomenon is observed in all sports from 25 years ago. go back and watch video of heavyweight boxing. even in a sport WITH weight training, the athletes were relatively small and light compared to today. heavyweight boxing champions defeated literally dozens of guys who were under 200 pounds.
one thing hand-eye coordination athletes can do to get an advantage is to have laser eye surgery, even if they do not need vision correction. this can give them above average eye function so they can focus on and track moving objects better.
patrickh, i think it's likely though not certain that bolt is using something. the problem in this case is the rate of improvement in speed, and less so the world record level of speed. nobody has improved that much in such a short time span.
ReplyDeletethe mitigating factors here a twofold. first, as steve has noted before, the best jamaicans have typically, in the past, competed for other nations, instead of running under the jamaican flag. it is only within the last several years that jamaican sprinters have all run for jamaica. this might explain the world record 4x100 meter relay.
second, in the case of usain bolt, he was never allowed to run the 100 meters until recently. he was trained to run the 200 and 400 because he is 6-5. the prevailing school of thought was that stride rate and not stride length was most important in 100 meter sprinting. short west african men were thought to be the ideal sprinters, and bolt, while being a west african, was coached to run longer events because his stride length was so big. when you watch him run the 100, it looks like he is effortlessly galloping across the track, while the other top sprinters are madly pounding away. also, world class 100 meter runners have rarely been even 180 pounds, and bolt is 190 pounds or more, making him, in conventional thinking, too heavy and having the wrong power-to-weight ratio.
this is the opposite of accepted sports science in swimming. distance per stroke, which is analogous to stride length, is how swimming races are analyzed at the highest level. tom jager, who was the fastest 50 meter swimmer for several years, measured his race in strokes, not time. when asked what it would take to go faster, he would talk about removing a stroke from the race, cutting the 50 meter sprint from 19 strokes down to 18 strokes, or whatever it was. alexander popov, who had the record from 2000 to 2008, was also a distance per stroke trainer.
fred bousquet, the first swimmer to cover 50 meters in 20 seconds, spent a full year doing the necessary weight training to strengthen his body enough to remove all non-shoulder joint movement in his arms, so that when he sprints, only his shoulder joint is in motion, and the rest of his arm is a rigid windmill blade, unbending, and smashing through the water. this directly contradicts conventional swimming sports science, which calls for a bent elbow recovery.
i would say that sports performance will continue to improve as long as the athletes continue getting taller and longer, while building higher levels of strength for increased power output.
Y'all is aware that "judicious use" of the 'roids will cause the little fellas to shrivel up and send their sperm count right on down-abouts to zero?
ReplyDeleteM'kay?
Death of The West, and whatnot.
Now back to the AVN awards on Showtime...
As Steve has writen, the team owners knew what was going on during this period, until it was too obvious to ignore. They wanted to keep the fan bucks coming for tickets and team goodies -- and the tax dollars flowing to build their luxury stadiums. So we have had millionaire players on dope and billionaires who are dopey bilking taxpayers out of hundreds of millions.
ReplyDeleteAnybody for separation of sport and state?
Usain Bolt definitely did PEDs
ReplyDeleteTiger - 40% chance
Any baseball player- 70%
Any football player- 75%
The babies shrink more from extended use of steroids than high levels of dosage per se, and this can be easily compensated for by periodic small injections of human chorionic gonadotropin.
ReplyDeleteCanseco ran into his difficulties post-roids because he's a stupid dumbass. He was on for years without a break (important), and did no PCT or post-cycle therapy. His balls had shut down completely, and there's no chance of those suckers coming back. Apparently, he's back on testosterone injections and is feeling, not surprisingly, a damn sight better. No idea whether he can get it up these days...and I don't want to know, but I suspect he can summon the wood as needed. Older men on test replacement therapy sometimes get shrunken balls, but they can still do the deed, and a lot more often than they could pre-TRT. I agree with someone who said in the future steroids and test will be administered as part of anti-aging therapies. Which is why I think athletes should be permitted to use them. Will lead to research to develop more effective drugs with fewer side effects. Let athletes be guinea pigs for the rest of us! That way they might really end up being worth the money they're paid.
I'd be interested in some stats that show all these athletes "dying young" from steroid use, as one of the Anonymi claimed. I'm unaware of any such mortality avalanche, and would like to see some numbers. Millions have used steroids, and the real story is how few problems they cause, not how many.
Oh, and great answer jody. Thanks.
PatrickH: The babies shrink more from extended use of steroids than high levels of dosage per se, and this can be easily compensated for by periodic small injections of human chorionic gonadotropin.
ReplyDelete1) What's the combined effect on potency/impotency?
2) What's the combined effect on sperm counts, sperm virility, and male "fertility" [ability to impregnate a female and bring to live birth a normal, healthy child]?
PS: These are serious questions, just in case you were wondering. Thanks.
PPS: Didn't Arnold lose his heart valve from doing the 'roids?
Me no likey the idea of heart valve replacement surgery...
Patrick said:
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested in some stats that show all these athletes "dying young" from steroid use, as one of the Anonymi claimed.
Well check this story out. They dont even test for steroids in wrestling.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2004-03-12-pro-wrestling_x.htm
LV, since test administration is actually a fairly effective form of birth control for men, it clearly suppresses sperm counts while it's done and for a time after cessation.
ReplyDeletePotency is enhanced noticeably when men receive test shots. This effect persists even if the men get shrunken balls, though potency will decline post-cycle unless compensated for by post-cycle therapy, an effect of lowered test levels immediately after a cycle.
HCG administration is really just about de-shrinking the babies. It's part of Post cycle therapy to help restart endogenous test production, which shuts down during cycles, though HCG doesn't really directly do that, exactly (it's a little complicated). HCG is often used during cycle instead (this is the cutting-edge way to use it) to keep the babies full-sized and productive of seminal fluid (not sperm as far as I know) throughout the cycle and attenuating the post cycle crash of test levels, and shortening post-cycle recovery duration enormously.
Arnold claims his heart problems were a genetic condition...maybe, but there is evidence of heart damage done by extended long-term roid use. But it's not clear how much the 'roids are responsible as other things, like the massively increased bulk of abusers, increased blood pressure (itself causable by roids, but also by other aspects including weight gain) or the enlargement of the left ventricle effect that vigorous exercise, including weight training, can induce.
Summary: potency increases while using, sperm count goes down, babies shrink. Post cycle, without therapy, big crash, test down, muscles shrink, energy drops, libido is gone, balls are peas, no sperm, no semen, no joy in mudville. All compensatable for, but not eliminable.
Anonymous, thanks for the link, but the story was a disgrace, exactly the kind of statistically illiterate anecdote-laden, magical association mumbo jumbo I've come to expect from sports journalists.
ReplyDeleteThere is some evidence that serious long-term steroid abuse will damage the heart, through high blood pressure caused by water retention and by considerable increases in body weight.
Unfortunately, the article spends most of its time anecdoting its way around, confusing the issue hopelessly by going on about painkiller abuse, cocaine abuse (these both also produce heart problems in long-term abusers), even going so far as to the do this disgraceful kind of rhetorical question thingy-jig: a guy's found dead...and guess what? There were traces of marijuana in his system!
So it's marijuana that kills! Thanks for clearing that up Mr. Journalist Hack Man.
This kind of "journalism" doesn't shed any light at all on the dangers of steroid use (they are real, just not that great, and virtually non-existent with elementary precautions and common sense), because it simply doesn't engage in scientific reasoning at all. It was valueless, sensationalist, yellow journalism at its worst. A disgrace, really.
Sorry, but I have to call it as I see it.
Jody said:
ReplyDelete"i doubt woods used any sports drugs. if he did, he did not need to. for a 6 foot tall man, a 30 pound bodyweight increase from age 18 to age 28 is completely possible in a sport where the competitors are not typically large or weight trained at age 18. the average man can make that kind of improvement. woods is within the normal range for a 10 year improvement in size and strength."
I'm not saying that Tiger is definitely on roids, but I do think he is suspicious. There are a few things you have wrong in your post. 1) We're talking about more like a 40+ pound gain; 2) he didn't to this over a 10 year period, he did in a 4 to 6 month period in his late 20s; 3) Tiger wass doing a serious power training program at Stanford (and afterwards) including a lot of Olympic and power lifts.
Jody also said:
"one thing hand-eye coordination athletes can do to get an advantage is to have laser eye surgery, even if they do not need vision correction. this can give them above average eye function so they can focus on and track moving objects better."
Woods did do this. He had his vision corrected to better than 20-20.
Re Bolt: I've pointed it out before that his body build gives him a huge advantage. If you look at him closely, you'll notice that from knee to head, he is about the same size as his ca. 1.8m competitors. The difference is his exceptionally long shinbones (and forearms). Since there's not much mass at the end of his long, thin lower limbs, it doesn't create all that much more torque than other sprinters with shorter lower limbs and he gets a huge stride advantage. Even so, he still has a much slower turnover at his hip joints: Compare him to Maurice Greene. 1.96 m tall Bolt can run the 100m in 9.69 s, which is 51.02 times his height. 1.76 m Green runs the 100m in 9.79 s. This is 56.82 times his height. Green could run 51.02 times his height in 8.79 s. You can see how the stride makes the difference. Also note that Bolt gained a ton of lean muscle mass (177 lbs. to ovr 200 lbs.) and dropped his 100m time a lot from 2007 to 2008 (10.03 to 9.69s).
To the anonymous who is saying that Tiger suddenly put on 30-40 pounds of muscle in his late 20s. Do you have a link?
ReplyDeleteHe had his greatest year at age 24 in 2000, winning three major championships. I'm wondering why he would change his body shape after that?
Steve,
ReplyDeleteAfter digging around the internet, here's the article:
http://www.mensfitness.com/tiger_woods/exclusives/185
I came across this while waiting in the doctor's office for a checkup. What raised a lot of red flags is the ridiculous intensity of his training (including in season), which is really hard to do without help. What also raised red flags was an article in the same issue discussing the indictment of the Met's trainer Radomski for supplying the Met's players with steroids. Fresh from reading that article describing the effects and uses of steroids, I turned to the Tiger article and practically everthing reported about his intense workout screams between the lines: he's gotta be takin' something not to break down under that regimine.
He talks about not being able to put on mass until his late 20s on page 5. This is hard to believe even for late bloomers (which I see no evidence that he was) given his workout regimine from Stanford onward. (I couldn't find it online, but I read in Sports Illustrated circa mid-90s about his condition at Stanford. He was doing some pretty sophisticated strength and conditioning workouts (including olympic and power lifts) there. This is not proof positive, but, since we're talking about athletes taking performance enhancers and you brought up golf, I thought I'd mention Woods.
BTW, I've stood next to him a number of times (1998, 1999, 2002, 2007). First, he's not 6'2" as per the article. One of the times I saw him, a friend of mine, who is 6'2" on the dot was standing next to Woods in a supermarket and he was noticeably taller than Woods. Also, back in 1998 and 99 and 2002, Woods was very wiry. In 2007, he was huge. He looked a lot bigger than the 185 lbs. stated in the article.
"He had his greatest year at age 24 in 2000, winning three major championships. I'm wondering why he would change his body shape after that?"
I've thought about this a bit. In addition to being mentally tough, what makes Woods a stand out is that he has a complete game: he has the ability to absolutely kill the ball off the tee combined with a great short game. One advantage he had was that he could turn a long par 5 into a 4, giving himself an extra shot on the green (if necessary) because he could hit the ball so far compared to his competition. (Daly could do this too.) Perhaps some of his competitors started juicing and Wood's thought he had to keep up with the Jonses (or maybe the Duvals - Duval got a lot more muscular and played Woods tough for a while until his body started to fall apart on him - is Woods' body starting to do this now? Knee surgeries, etc.) In 2002/3, Woods started to drop in the average driving distance standings until he came roaring back in 2005. Perhaps there are other reasons. Maybe recovery time? There's some indication that testerone improves visuospatial ability (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15041084 ; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19042092?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum ; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16487665?ordinalpos=7&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum ), which is probably quite important in golf.
Also, check out the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster - somewhere in there (maybe in the extra scenes) they talk about his laser eye surgery to improve his vision to greater than 20-20.
Basically, on anything where there's a lot of money involved, people are going to look for angles to give them the edge. There's certainly enough money in golf where it's worthwhile to take performance enhancers if they help improve performance (and there are few sports where objective performance is more important and inarguable than golf) and once a few start, you can be sure the rest will follow for fear of losing their competitiveness. Therefore, we should assume that all big money sports are rife with performance enhancers until proven otherwise.