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Science & technology
科技板块
Sport and drugs
运动和药物
Still doped up
药劲儿还没过？
Thousands of athletes at the Tokyo Olympics are likely to be doping. How many will get caught remains to be seen
有数千名参加东京奥运会的运动员可能服用了兴奋剂，且等看会抓到多少
As Olympics go, the 2020 games, scheduled to start in Tokyo on July 23rd, are shaping up to be among the strangest in the competition's history. Because of covid-19, even their name is out of date, for they are taking place a year late. And contagion-prevention means most stadiums will be empty of spectators, so events will take place in funereal silence.
随着奥运会的举行，定于7月23日在东京开幕的2020年奥运会将成为该赛事历史上最奇怪的一届奥运会。由于新冠疫情，该届奥运会推迟了一年，就连它的名字都过时了。此外，对新冠的预防意味着大多数体育场里都将没有观众出席，所以比赛将在葬礼般的寂静中进行。
The 2020 games will be unusual in another way, too. They will be the first summer games since 1984's—which were boycotted by the Soviet Union—at which Russia will not be present, at least officially. Though some of its athletes will participate as individuals, under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee, the national team has been banned in the aftermath of one of the biggest doping scandals in the history of sport. Between 2011 and 2015, and possibly for longer, Russia systematically doped hundreds of athletes. It roped in its spy agencies to subvert the anti-doping tests overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), then fabricated data as part of an attempt to get back into the authorities' good books. A controversial court ruling last year reduced Russia's initial four-year ban to two, which will expire in 2022.
2020年奥运会还有一个与众不同的地方。这将是自1984年以来俄罗斯首次缺席(至少官方缺席)的夏季奥运会，而1984年的夏季奥运会曾遭到苏联的抵制。俄罗斯国家代表队因体育史上最大的兴奋剂丑闻之一而被禁赛，所以某些俄罗斯运动员只能以个人身份参赛。在2011年至2015年间，甚至可能更久，俄罗斯对数百名运动员进行了系统性的兴奋剂注射。它诱使其间谍机构破坏由世界反兴奋剂机构监管的反兴奋剂测试，然后伪造数据，试图重回当局的怀抱。去年，一项有争议的法庭裁决将俄罗斯最初的四年禁令缩短为两年，将于2022年到期。
Stung by a scandal that took place under their noses, officials insist this year's games will be the best-policed ever. The International Olympic Committee says testing in the run-up to them will be the most extensive yet conducted. Sebastian Coe, president of Word Athletics, the international governing body of athletes, has warned that it will be harder than ever to get away with doping.
官员们被发生在自己眼皮子底下的丑闻刺激到了，坚称今年的奥运会将是有史以来最严密的一届奥运会。国际奥委会表示，赛前将会进行迄今为止最为广泛的测试。国际运动员管理机构“世界田径”主席塞巴斯蒂安·科警告称，使用兴奋剂将比以往任何时候都更难逃脱惩罚。
"Harder than ever" is, however, a long way from "impossible". Though new technology and increasingly strict rules have indeed made doping trickier than in the past, thousands of the 11,000-odd athletes at the Tokyo games could nonetheless be cheating. Steroids, erythropoietin (EPO) and newer, less familiar performance-enhancing drugs (PEDS) will have bulked their muscles, enriched their blood and allowed them to train harder than unenhanced humans would find possible. New drugs, clever tactics and institutional indifference or corruption could meanwhile help them outwit testers.
然而，“比以往任何时候都困难”离“不可能”还有很长的路要走。尽管新技术和日益严格的规定确实让兴奋剂的使用变得比过去更加棘手，但参加东京奥运会的11,000多名运动员中仍有数千人可能存在作弊行为。类固醇、促红细胞生成素(EPO)和更新的、不太为人所知的兴奋剂(PEDS)能够让服用者的肌肉更加强健，血液更加丰富，如此他们就能够比普通人类更加努力地训练。新药、聪明的策略、机构的不做作或腐败同时也能帮助他们骗过测试人员。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
