Drug Testing For Olympic Chess Players?

Lawrence Person writes: "According to this AP wire story, they're thinking of adding chess as an Olympic sport. The downside? Mandatory drug testing. 'He's using steroids to move that pawn!'"

Comments

Why not?

[Masem]

I see nothing wrong with having a consistent set of drug-testing rules applies to all contestants in the Olympics, regardless of the competition. This only promotes both fairness and sportsmanship in the Games.

And as others have pointed out, there's more than just steroids that can be used to improve performance. Imagine a drug that can be used to simply keep the mind more alert for a longer period of time (the side effect being the need to sleep for several days afterwards to make up for it). I would surmise that a chess player that has taken such a drug would fair better than one that hasn't considering the length of some chess matches.

Re: Performance drugs for chess? Sure...

[skinhead]

Of course, they can't ban cofee.. can they?
In many sports, there are strict limits for caffeine. It's possible to get busted in tests just by drinking too much coffee. Usually 300-500mg of caffeine pushes you above the limit (12mg of caffeine in 1l of urine). Since there is usually 40-60mg of caffeine in one cup of coffee, 10 cups of coffee would be too much.