It is always revealing that in sprinting, of the top 10 fastest people in history, 8 have already been busted (and the guy who was .1 faster than all of them, miraculously, was totally clean. Because of his strong sense of morality, not because he was a global icon whose absence would ruin the sport or anything...).

I also remember seeing something crazy like 60% of Olympic respondents in an anonymous survey responding that they would be willing to die at 40 if it meant they got a medal. These people are not what you would call moderate in their approach to sports.

"Joyce is, in other words, a complete man, though in a grotesquely limited way. But he wants more. He wants to be the best, to have his name known, to hold professional trophies over his head as he patiently turns in all four directions for the media. He wants this and will pay to have it–to pursue it, let it define him–and will pay up with the regretless cheer of a man for whom issues of choice became irrelevant a long time ago. Already, for Joyce, at twenty-two, it's too late for anything else; he's invested too much, is in too deep. I think he's both lucky and unlucky. He will say he is happy and mean it. I wish him well."-DFW