What Does a Body Good?

Russian cross-country skier Julija Tchepalova was pregnant at the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

Even the Russian news agency Pravda took note of the happy news, a couple of months after the Games, calling the pregnancy “the most interesting high life piece of news in [the] sport world.”

Or was there something even more interesting to it? Medical experts have long known that pregnancy can lead to a measurable improvement in an athletic performance -- because pregnancy produces an abundance of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, boosting endurance.

Tchepalova, who has not been accused of wrongdoing of any sort, won three medals in 2002, bronze in the 15-kilometer freestyle event, silver in the 10-kilometer classic and gold in the individual sprint.

As the 2006 Turin Games head into Day 6, what an athlete does with his or her body remains one of the undercurrents of world-class sports.

At issue are scientific, ethics and sports-related threads -- a collection of often wildly different ideas, including varying cultural norms, the boundaries of an individual athlete’s personal autonomy, the regimentation inherent in elite sport and the performance-driven demands of coaches, administrators and sponsors.

Sports and governmental authorities, spurred by high-profile doping scandals and the enactment in recent years of the first worldwide anti-doping code, have been trying to root out those who use illicit means in search of championships.

There is no bright-line test, however, and the performance-enhancing alternatives have been limited only by the boundaries of human imagination, everything from witch doctors to a diet of “muscular vegetarianism” to the case of Ruwiyati, an Indonesian marathon runner who attributed her winning performance at the Southeast Asian Games in 1997 to the practice of sucking her coach’s blood upon reaching the finish line. World-class sports are awash in technical journals and Internet sites assessing the merits of ingesting bee pollen or mimicking the posture of women from the Kikiyu tribe in Kenya, who routinely carry water or wood weighing up to 70% of their body mass in sacks supported by bindings strapped across the forehead.

The lawyers are also in on the scene, weighing in on topics such as what one 2003 law review article called “the abortion-doping scheme.”

Because the “effects of pregnancy parallel blood doping,” but athletes “cease to gain performance benefits after 14 to 15 weeks” of gestation, there is a widespread suspicion that athletes in some countries have engaged in a “rather abhorrent” cycle of pregnancy and abortion, the article says.

After revelations of the East German state-sponsored doping protocols in the 1970s, which produced lots of Olympic medals but also destroyed the lives of many young athletes, anti-doping authorities have vowed never again.

“This is 2006,” said Steven Ungerleider, an Oregon researcher and author of the book, “Faust’s Gold,” which details the East German system. “We’re living under a new world order and every athlete knows very well ... you can’t put anything in your body, and that means nada, without checking with the appropriate anti-doping authorities.”

But is getting pregnant really cheating? What about sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber to mimic the effects of living at altitude, known to spur endurance? What about injecting a solution that includes a substance found in mouthwash into the knee, on the chance it spurs healing?

U.S. Alpine skier Bode Miller, who has made a reputation as an iconoclast and free thinker, is at the center of the debate.

He and another U.S. skier, Erik Schlopy, have acknowledged traveling to Mexico for shots of “the Ongley solution” -- from a physician who has faced legal difficulties in the U.S.

Milne Ongley, a New Zealand-born orthopedist practicing in Ensenada, calls himself on his website “the Mozart of reconstructive therapy.” The Ongley solution, according to the website, consists of distilled water, sugar, glycerin and phenol, an antiseptic sometimes used in mouthwash and throat lozenges.

None of those ingredients are banned as performance-enhancing, and the treatment, known as prolotherapy, is available in the United States. Neither Miller nor Schlopy has ever failed a drug test. Miller reportedly was treated within the last year. It is not clear when Schlopy was in Ensenada.

A telephone call Monday to the Ensenada office was not returned. U.S. ski team officials have seemed dubious about the treatments, but medical experts have said mainstream interest in prolotherapy was growing.

A University of Wisconsin research team received government funding in 2004 to study the theory that the injected solution acts as an irritant that stimulates the body to heal itself.

Before they were ordered by U.S. ski officials to stop talking about it, Miller and Schlopy said they were believers.

Schlopy, at 33 the oldest skier on the U.S. team, raves on Ongley’s website about having the “youngest knees on the team.”

Two things are certain, experts say: Athletes have always sought an edge, and because of their keen motivation, they are often in front -- way in front -- of the establishment in finding something new that works.

“You’re dealing with a lot of different opinions, all based on very little fact,” Miller has said. “If people wanted to do research about the doctor, I think they would come to their own decisions. I think that’s what a lot of the athletes have done.”

Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor and doping expert, stressing that he was not commenting on the merits of the “Ongley solution,” said, “I wouldn’t look askance at an athlete seeking what might seem to laypeople or professionals as bizarre or silly, if not dangerous.

“Athletes have done silly and dangerous things. But they’ve also been ahead of the medical community in identifying performance-enhancing treatments.”

John MacAloon, a University of Chicago professor and longtime student of the ancient and modern Olympics, said another, quite different motivation may also be at work -- a rebellion of sorts.

Olympic athletes typically live structured lives, MacAloon said, not just in daily routine but alongside agents, coaches, managers, marketers, even well-meaning equipment suppliers such as those at Nike who have engineered a body-hugging suit worn here by short-track speedskating stars. It weighs 479 grams, a 52% drop from the suits worn in 2002.

Perhaps, MacAloon said, there is a “quiet, maybe not even conscious protest against the increasing regimentation, the authoritarian rigidities, even ... the militarization of the world of top-class athletes, who are so surrounded by entourages of every sort trying to coordinate their every move.”

He added, “The privacy of the body ... makes it perhaps the only area that one really is free to ultimately assert this kind of freedom and independence, and therefore, while as odd as it may seem that one is visiting strange clinics or embarking upon funny diets or oddball orthopedic treatments, it gets very hard at the end of the day for the authorities to tell you yes or no.

“Because it’s your body.”

Tchepalova made no secret of her pregnancy in 2002. Nor did Pravda, which in an English-language report still available on the Internet said, “After the Olympic Games ended, the athlete did not have an abortion, like most ... sportswomen do.”

Instead, it said that “naturally produced adrenaline [played] a positive role: being pregnant already during the 2002 [Games], the champion had not to use additional stimulators.”

How much Tchepalova’s pregnancy meant in her 2002 success is not clear. She had previously won a gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Games in the 30-kilometer freestyle event, an 18-mile endurance test.

Daughter Olesya was born in January 2003. And Tchepalova is back at the Olympics. In her first race here, the 15-kilometer pursuit, she finished ninth Sunday, 50.8 seconds behind winner Kristina Smigun of Estonia.