Jun 8, 2009

Danica Comes Clean

Celebrity race driver Danica Patrick, the most publicized single race-winner in the history of the IndyCar Series, just got herself into hot water for her flip remarks about performance-enhancing drugs. In a recent Sports Illustrated interview, she had an exchange with Dan Patrick in which she took a rather cavalier approach to the use of such drugs. When Patrick asked her the hypothetical question of whether she would take a performance-enhancing drug if it would help her win the Indianapolis 500 and she was certain that she wouldn’t get caught, she replied, “Well, then it’s not cheating, is it?... if nobody finds out.”

Apparently surprised, Patrick pressed on, asking, “So you would do it?” And Danica replied, “Yeah, it would be like finding a gray area. In motorsports we work in the gray areas a lot. You’re trying to find where the holes are in the rulebook.”

Later, when there was a bit of an uproar over her comments, Danica tried to pass them off as just a joke. But when you look at her comments through the prism of what we have learned about racing through the years, they are anything but a joke. Quite the contrary, they are a candid look at the racer’s mentality. One might sum up that mentality by paraphrasing W.C. Fields: “Anything worth winning is worth cheating for.”

Of course, Danica did come out and say that her Indy Car team cheats. And it is not our contention that they do cheat, at least in the context of what racers regard as cheating -- and that is cheating so artlessly that you get caught cheating. In the racing ethos that has developed over the past 100-plus years in motorsports, tactics like lowering the ride height under specs, stashing extra fuel somewhere in the chassis, building in extra flaps that aid braking -- in short, anything that will gain you an edge while being largely undetectable -- aren’t really deemed to be cheating: They are deemed to be smart.

Because of this, it is not at all surprising that Danica would say that using performance drugs is OK as long as you don’t get caught. Sadly, we’re sure there are baseball, football and basketball players who would say exactly the same thing. But just because Danica has company, it doesn’t make her remarks any less troubling. Use of performance-enhancing drugs isn’t just cheating: It is also risking irreparable harm. And her tacit approval of it, which could influence her young fans to experiment with performance-enhancing drugs, is the most troubling aspect of it all.