I despised Andre Agassi when I first saw his long wispy hair and that gold earring; a desert rat with tacky jewellery. He came from Las Vegas. That explains it I thought.

But now that I realise he hated tennis and took crystal meth because of his overbearing ex-boxer father, who “built a backyard prison just for him”, I feel a little sorry for him. The brash demeanour of those early days was the product of a tortured soul. 

It is apparent now that the professional era of sport has been awash with infusions, injections,  and enhancements.  Sport is a livelihood and for some a source of greatness so the urge to maintain or improve performance illegally must be a powerful one.  And then to live the life of the famous, or to escape it, there are the ‘recreational’  drugs.

So with the current knowledge it’s a little more difficult to be judgemental and perhaps it’s even time to right past injustices. 

How is life now for poor Ben Johnson? Impoverished, disgraced. Why? We now know that Carl Lewis was on drugs too. Johnson beat Lewis with that scintillating display in the 1988 Olympic final. It was a performance that should have led to the Olympic recall of the 60 metres – the real sprint. Unfortunately the sight of its runners at the indoor event slamming into a mattress on the wall hasn’t done it any favours. 

Johnson had the explosive power of the true sprinter. Lewis had the wind up action of a two legged giraffe in white socks.

Johnson was using good old fashioned anabolic steroids which build muscle mass. The history of isolating steroids from testicles involved a Nobel Prize winning German chemist wading through “tens of thousands of litres of urine”.

Another product used by athletes in power sports is the equine-derived growth hormone (Lewis must have used giraffes).  Australian track sprint cyclist Mark French was convicted (later rescinded due to lack of evidence) and banned in 2004 for using it. At the initial hearing  he implicated track legends Shane Kelly and Sean Eadie.

 Now while ‘recreational’ drugs like crystal meth and cocaine taken prior to a game can assist a player by enhancing concentration and reducing fatigue, long term use is actually performance inhibiting. It is only a matter of time before your career comes crashing down in shards of … crystal.

If a long term user of recreational drugs can win an elite event it is, in fact, a great achievement. Perhaps, as with the Special Olympics, categories can be introduced to highlight this fact. The legacy of Andre Agassi would have been even greater if there had been an Olympic Mens Singles – Crystal Methamphetamine Affected.

It’s also hard not to be impressed , and sickened at the same time, by some of these drugs and doping methods. 

Crystal meth. A great sounding name that, if you ignore the meth (too like metho). So  gorgeously twinkly, like something Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka would have dreamt up (what sort of trip were they on in that boat tunnel?). Johnny Depp in the lame remake looked like he may have been on something too.

I’ve always loved the name of Crystal Palace for a team (Tottenham Hotspurs is a good one also) and imagine them prancing around inside a glistening gilded dome, instead of the concrete and wet brick dive of South London they actually train in.

The major practise in endurance sports appears to be the use of EPO, a hormone that can be used to increase red blood cell production. EPO was also used by sprinters such as Johnson and Marion Jones because it can assist in recuperation from events and recovery from injury. It may also reduce lactic acid and hence the extent of  “jelly legs” experienced by sprinters over the closing stages of a race. 

The French sports daily L’Equipe claims it has EPO samples from Lance Armstrong taken during the 1999 Tour de France.  Armstrong may have used EPO when it couldn’t be detected but then so was everyone else. The French don’t like Armstrong because he’s so un-European – and Texan.  He dominated their race with the meticulousness and mind numbing banality of a NASA mission. He even looks like Buzz Aldrin.

It’s more likely that Armstrong’s survival from cancer (strengthening his resolve,  changing his personality and body shape) was the reason a one-day Classics specialist was transformed into a Tour legend.

Clever, and no doubt highly paid, doctors have continually altered the molecular structure of the hormone to avoid detection by the prevailing anti-doping tests. As Dr No said: “The successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be”.

The other known methods are testosterone injection (Cyclist Cadel Evans sounds like he’s on  female hormones), and blood doping. The latter involves injecting your own, or someone elses, blood.  

 To do this you need to keep the blood satchels in the refrigerator and be wary of raids by  doping officials and family members:-

Mrs Vinokourov: “Alexander, those raspberry pops I found hanging in the fridge taste        absolutely AWFUL!”

A legal form of blood treatment used on rugby league player Daniel Mortimer’s injured hip involved withdrawing blood, infusing it with an increased concentration of platelets “rich in healing properties” and reinjecting it into the hip tendon. That brings to mind unfortunate images of Manly players slurping on their calves’ blood smoothies: “Can I have some soy milk in this Des?”

Apparently cyclists have a good idea when a competitor is doping. The key indicators are : continual surges during a stage  (eg Vinokourov- blood doping 2007 Tour de France), extreme fluctuations in performance (eg Floyd Landis-testosterone 2006 Tour de France) and marked improvements (eg current Tour champion Albert Contador’s change of status  from poor time triallist to one of the best has raised some suspicion). 

So, for anyone presently struggling in suburban sporting competitions remember to embrace your ordinariness because apparently the only way to sporting greatness is to have one, or a  combination, of the following: a) a terrible upbringing  b) drugs or  c) a terminal cancer prognosis.

P.S. If you can’t afford crystal meth is there a glass version?

“Victoria Racing Club barman Les Taggart’s smiling face greets connections as they arrive in his Flemington bar to celebrate a win”, says the Sunday Age.

The Flemington Winners Bar, however, certainly doesn’t look  like a place for winners; what, with the “cream carpet and white walls spotted with old racing photographs”. The  carpet used to be white like the walls but with any organisation that relies on volunteers the first casualty is the decor.

Old Les has been smiling and serving winners  (Moet on a Boags beer mat) for seven years now. Who are these owner connections poor Les has been pandering to all these years? The ones you see in the paper after their horse has won – a group of them all in the same suits and wearing the same sunglasses (Who owns how much? Who is connected to who? Who cares?). The business sections of the newspapers don’t show these connector types – saturated in oily ambition , their skin the colour and texture of the Duck a l’Orange they’ve just ingested, open mouths laughing off the Billecart Salmon Rose – when their share prices have risen. So why show them here?

Now don’t get me wrong about enjoying great food and wine. On one rare occasion I had the time and money to fly anywhere I got upgraded from 24B Economy to 1A Business Class – it must have been my shirt because it’s the lavender colour  eveyone has been wearing to the races over the last couple of years.

I sit back with a sigh and after introductions with the business chap in 1B (1B:”Hello, I’m in mining and horse racing. What do you do?”  Me: “Hi I’m in… house husbandry”.) I order the charcuterie plate and a glass of full bodied chardonnay – which is difficult to find in this time of  ‘crisp’, ‘flinty dry’ and ‘acidic backboned’ white wines. If it’s a chablis you’re after, buy a chablis.

Just as the steward approaches with my order I realise I can’t open my table. 1B had opened his, like a Transformers toy,  in a blur of moving parts and angled surfaces. He finished his bottle of red in a blur too.

“Flemington is the home of tradition and the Melbourne Cup Carnival” proclaims the VRC website. According to the Oxford Dictionary carnivals traditionally referred to the “festivities and  riotous revelry” before the fasting period of Lent.  The prospect of fasting must explain why getting p*ssed on Melbourne Cup day isn’t enough for some people so they also get p*ssed at the Victoria Derby, the Mackinnon Stakes and the VRC Oaks.

Carnival time also included a circus and the Flemington spectacle is certainly that. There are the wonderful aspects of a circus: the glorious colour of the racing silks and turf, the athleticism and the NOISE generated by these magnificent animals.

Germaine Greer understood the magnificence of horses: “The male is beautiful, his cheeks are smooth, his body near hairless, his head full-maned, his eyes clear, his manner shy and his bell flat”. Of course, if Germaine was a man she would be serving time for propagating paedophilia because she was referring to boys!

Whether it is also a sport has been fiercely debated. Are jockeys athletes, or small men who steam themselves dry and hang on for dear life?

Perhaps the role of jockey is downplayed because we just can’t bear having to hear them talk after a race. Especially when one of them is being interviewed by another in a helmet with an antenna.

Another unbearable sound is that of the radio race caller. That nasal drone: “Aaand theeiir raaacing nooow…” has been floating out of windows for what seems an eternity (is it the same chap or do they train them to sound like that?).  If only we could listen to Peter Cook instead: “It’s Big Tits from Vagina with the Prick tucked in behind these two. Then comes the blinkered Buttocks being pressed by the Poof, and trailing the field is Arsehole”.

Are trainers the equivalent of coaches? If sport is a mental and physical contest can horses be classed as athletes?

The clowns of the circus are those stumbling around in high heels. In the carpark that they’ve never left and with all those teeth and big eyes (those who don’t have big eyes wear big sunglasses) they vomit flute-loads of Yellow sparkling while their male counterparts disgorge themselves over the guard-rail.

While the training staff, jockeys and the equine performers should get all the accolades, I wish the ones with all the money were people like old Les Taggart.