Some thought that the pharmaceutical industry came up with the idea, but given all the trouble monitoring the composition of athletes, lots of people began to ask, Why bother? Why not just hold a no-holds-barred Olympics? No drug would be banned. No training method illegal. Stop arguing whether a prosthetic, like laser eye surgery, enabled a heroic tale of adversity overcome or was an unfair advantage for the winner of the shooting competition. Just bring it on, and whoever ran the fastest, or threw the discus farthest, whoever touched the pad at the end of the pool, or crossed the finish line first would be declared champion, no matter if the webbing between a swimmer’s toes was the result of a natural mutation or plastic surgery, no matter if the heart powering the athlete to victory was made of sterner stuff, or had been made of sterner stuff. No questions asked. Anyway, once kids in the street were running three-minute miles, what would be the point?

The traditional Olympic Commission passed a resolution banning any athlete who took part in the Freak Olympics, as they called it. But Big Pharma, The Plastic Surgeons Association, Prosthetic Limb Manufacturers, then Pepsi and McDonald's, and all the rest sponsored athletes just as Pennzoil or STP plastered logos all over the bodies of NASCAR cars, the tattoos of Nike and Adidas and Visa covering the arms and legs and faces and uniforms of runners, divers, cyclists, bobsledders, skiers, speed skaters, weightlifters, while traditions like testing for steroids faded into the past of other bygone practices, such as competing nude, as did the original Olympians.