Word: sport
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...anyone seemed to have a lock on a gold medal this year, it was Soviet pole vaulter Sergei Bubka. He has virtually owned the event for the past four years, breaking the world record nine times and scoring ten of the 16 best jumps in the history of the sport. His real Olympic goal was not to beat the competition -- which seemed a foregone conclusion -- but to become the first man ever to soar over 20 ft., a threshold he had been flirting with all year...
...Sport at the highest levels, whether labeled professional or merely operated that way, has always demanded of its followers a certain capacity for illusion. Exalting the athletes we pay to play for us over the ones they pay to play for them is tricky. It requires an ability to squint a little and forget a lot, to gild things...
...instance, basketball fans know full well the indelicacies of college recruiting but are ready to imagine that their school's pituitary catch matriculated like any other student and went out for the team. Pro-football fans are hip to the sport's ghastly rigors -- revel in them, as a matter of fact -- but have no questions to ask offensive linemen with necks like waists. Ultimately, baseball's pennant races push all the season's misdeeds and mistresses aside. In any of these fantasy worlds, lasting disillusionment is nearly impossible since illusionment is the name of the game...
...almost every sport, there are some pills and potions that promise black- magic results. To fire their systems up, many competitors have turned to stimulants, using amphetamines or even caffeine enemas and suppositories, because rectal administration puts the chemical into the bloodstream without causing an upset stomach. Testing for "uppers" by sports federations is highly reliable, but use of this class of drugs is not confined to competitions like the Olympics. Some of the most famous cases of stimulant usage have occurred in professional baseball and football, which have lax testing for the substances...
...Johnson, the world' s fastest human, becomes sport' s most famous steroid abuser, pumping up suspicions of widespread drug abuse. -- Led by Flo- Jo' s joyous medal romp, the athletes run, jump, dunk and slam their way through a picturesque final week of records set and favorites upset. -- One man' s answer to why TV sees less than the eye of the beholder...