He plainly thinks sport’s puritanical approach to performance enhancing drugs is the product of an old-fashioned mindset. “Pharmacology has developed so we can create safe drugs, administer them in safe doses and monitor them in a way we couldn’t in the past,” he says. “The world of sport has not yet caught up with advances in pharmacology in recent years. Very little in the world is as well studied as medicinal substances and drugs. The problem arises when you have backyard preparations that are not subjected to trials.”

But how far could we responsibly go in permitting the use of previously banned substances? Should we allow athletes to take the most demonised of all performance enhancing drugs - anabolic steroids?

He gives a careful reply. “The risks of anabolic steroids - although real - may in some cases have been overstated and in any case have to be put in the context of various aggressive forms of training and the risks we allow people to entertain every day of their lives.” When I raise the subject again, however, he is more forthright. “I would prefer my child take anabolic steroids and growth hormone than play rugby,” he says. “Growth hormone is safer than rugby. At least I don’t know of any cases of quadriplegia caused by growth hormone.”

That's from a contrarian take on sports doping. RTWT