More telling indicators are dramatic changes in a player's build in a short period of time, and a spike in statistical performance in "strength" categories like driving distance. "An adult working out very hard, who has trained in the past, would be lucky to get three pounds of new muscle mass a year," says Yesalis. "Seeing something more than that is a red flag to me. Does Tiger Woods take steroids? He was a phenom and a long hitter even as a skinny young kid. I'm a pretty suspicious guy, but Tiger's not a guy I would think of as doing them. When I see what he's done at his age and in terms of maturing into his body, fireworks don't go off in my head."
In terms of gaining strength, Yesalis says a 1 percent measurable improvement relative to peers in a year through natural methods is dramatic. "Florence Griffith-Joyner went from a mediocre sprinter to setting records our grandchildren aren't going to be able to break," Yesalis says of the late gold medalist. "That's a hard thing to explain happening naturally."
Q: Are "recreational" drugs considered performance enhancing?
A: In the Olympic code, drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin are banned. The LPGA has banned marijuana and cocaine but will not test for other recreational drugs.
Q: How long do steroids stay in the system?
A: That can vary from as little as a few weeks for testosterone applied as a cream to six months to a year for injected anabolic steroids like dianabol or deca-durabolin. The time varies by the size of the person taking them, the size of the dose and the time the person has been taking the drug.
Q: How come drug tests don't seem to catch all the athletes using steroids?
A: Drug tests look for specific chemical compounds that have been identified as performance enhancing by a sanctioning body like WADA. Athletes hire chemists to produce exotic steroid compounds to which the tests are essentially blind. "I strongly believe that a large majority of Olympic and world records set over the last 50 years are drug-related," says Yesalis. "Top athletes have the best experts money can buy working for them. They're not getting drugs from some guy in an alley somewhere. You'd have to be pretty foolish to get caught."
Q: What happens to athletes who stop taking steroids?
A: Most commonly, they suffer training injuries because they can't exercise at the same pace or frequency as they did while taking steroids. With long-term anabolic-steroid use, some athletes suffer severe tendon injuries because of the increased load from supporting larger, more explosive muscles.
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