[galenko]

In my personal, anecdotal experience...

Once you get far enough in ANY sport, you start considering tradeoffs between risking long term health and improving performance. If you are a competent adult, you can evaluate your drivers, consider risks.

But without fail, in ANY competitive sport, you realise that you have to risk health in order to achieve that next performance tier, there is no other way.

Once you get into that 1-10%(depending on sport) elite level, you realise that there is no way you can compete without PEDs.

I've participated in (taken myself) and have been a witness to this in weightlifting(olympic and strongman), soccer, cycling and swimming. Starting young. Real young.

Coaches of different sanity levels are trusted to make the right choices and not often questioned by busy or absent parents.

Everyone cheers on when medals are won and records are broken, without consideration for how it happens.

I personally had no idea I was taking hormone modifiers until about 16, it started at 11.

My coach just gave me what he said were vitamins and I never questioned it, he was the closest thing to a father I had, his authority was absolute.

At 16 I found myself in a hospital yellow as a banana on the brink of liver failure, that's when I found out.

Everyone on our team took what the coaches gave. Once a while we'd see a parent get into a shouting match with one of the coaches about something we didn't understand and that kid would never come back again.

Some of the guys I trained with went on to become highly recognisable names in their respective sports. One even has a supplement brand. Those I've kept in touch with continue PED use, that is the price of being at the top of the game.