Hong Kong Sevens | Going to the extremes to compete at the Sevens

What does it take to succeed as a sports person? With the constant pressure of only having a short-term career, 10 years if you are lucky, and renewing a contract every couple of years, isn’t it only reasonable for professional athletes to look at ways to help give them the extra 1 per cent that may be needed to stay on the field a little bit longer?

This is one of the most demanding sporting weekends any athlete – and fan – could to face. To what extremes are players willing to go to compete on the Sunday of the Sevens? As a spectator, a Panadol for the pounding headache and a pair of sunglasses might be all that is needed to back up from the Saturday. But for a player, the wrong vitamin supplement could equal a lengthy ban or worse.

With the recent doping allegations coming out of Australia and the Lance Armstrong saga, I began to think about how prevalent performance-enhancing drugs in rugby might be. Having grown up on a culture of sport and winning, it can be hard for a highly motivated athlete to not be the best or be involved with the best.

I moved to Sydney on a sporting scholarship at the age of 18 and was quickly thrust into an environment where you sank or swam. While not yete-like sportsmen, we were expected to perform and it was a cruel system, with many guys losing out to injury and never getting back.

I never saw performance-enhancing drugs, but you always hear rumours of guys coming back from ‘12-month injuries’ within three months, or hearing of an amazing new supplement.

But at what detriment to your body, long-term, were these practices? For me a protein supplement and the muscle builder creatine (both perfectly legal) were the only things I took, and even then I had my concerns about creatine.

Over the past six weeks I have tried to keep up to date with the drug scandal in Australia – from what I gather rugby union is one of the few mainstream sports not under investigation.