No surprise. Pro sports stopped being about sports years ago. Its about entertainment now. Babe Ruth would not have made the minors in todays game.
Is there an elite athlete on the planet not using PEDs? If they don't use in their day to day training, they use to recover from injuries. Personally I think it would be foolish for high paid athletes NOT to take PEDs. There is just too much on the line. Tiger Woods flew Dr. Galea from Canada to Florida for treatment after his knee surgery. A little controversy surrounded his reported treatment, some sort of plasma injection, but now their is a whole new controversy surrounding Tiger's personal doc: Human growth hormone (HGH) and Actovigen (comes from calf's blood) was found on Dr. Galea's assistant while crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. His assistant was found with other illegal drugs as well. The Canadian and American authorities worked together on this matter. Toronto authorities raided Dr. Tony Galea's clinic in October of 2009 following the findings. http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cach...ids&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
It would not even make sense for a golfer, let alone a golfer of Tiger woods' caliber to take HGH. Tiger can basically drive the ball as far as is necessary. Driving the ball would be the only reason for HGH and there would be so many down sides to it. Do you remember when Phil Mickelson beefed up, trying to imitate tigers well documented physical prowess? Well if you dont, I will tell you the story, basically his touch went to shit over night, because they are heavily reliant on having roughly the same stroke time after time. If you take HGH and get bigger, and stronger over night your stroke is screwed. I am not just talking ut of my ass either, I used to be a 2 handicapper, when I was in highschool, and my only worries were playing Hockey all winter and golfing all summer. I vividly remember a season where I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to beef up to make the AAA squad, and I remember my golf game going comlpetely to shit that summer. I was even bombing sandwedges 15 yards further. There would be absolutely no advantages to taking HGH as a golfer, unless you were trying to heal quicker, and thus I can guarantee Tiger aint juicing.
Coaches used to say increased muscle mass destroyed your swing in baseball, too. I don't think Tiger is using PEDs in his day to day routine. Like you mentioned, the advantage is in quicker recoveries from injuries. I have 1st hand experience with this. There are excellent tools available to athletes, especially professional athletes, that help with speedy recoveries, most of which are on the banned list. Getting back to McGuire, he said the only reason he used steroids was to recover from injuries. Personally I think he's a big fat liar. Sure, faster recovery time is what got him started, but it was obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of PEDs he was using for years and if he cycled, his cycles were very short, maybe a month or two off in the offseason. I'm not saying he used anywhere near the quantities of a professional wrestler or professional body builder (walking pharmacies), but his increased lean body mass, which deteriorated pretty fast after retiring, was a direct result of his drug use and completely intentional on his part. It wasn't to recover from a knee injury or sore hip or whatever.