“As a glucocorticosteroid, use of prednisolone during competition via oral, intravenous, intramuscular or rectal routes is banned under WADA anti-doping rules.[11] Local or topical use of prednisolone during competition as well as any use out of competition is not regulated.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prednisolone

So I guess my use in eyedrop form didn’t disqualify me from competing in the Olympics. Never mind my complete lack of athletic talent.

Steroids are drugs that make you stronger than you were before, so they’re peformance enhancers.

This is absolutely correct. One can play all the semantical games they want, but the fact is there is a very stark line that differentiates a drug like Toradol from an anabolic steroid. And that is one is the key enabler to allowing an athlete to physiologically change his body in a fundamental way so as to add capabilities he would otherwise not be able to enjoy. The other, Toradol, simply blocks pain and inflammation so as to allow what capabilities are already there in an athlete to be better utilized. An athlete’s God-given talents are not altered in any way. This is a key fundamental difference between these two classes of drugs, and those blurring the line are either ignorant, blind, or just want to keep making excuses for the steroids cheats.

Steroids harm your body and make you stronger. This drug harms your body and makes you able to play through pain.

Either way, you’re pharmaceutically enhancing your performance, and the arbitrary line drawn between these two classes (the PED list) is exactly that: arbitrary.

What about Lasek eye surgery, hip replacements on active players, or ligament restructuring?

Not to mention, nobody really knows exactly what how any drug affects the player’s performance when it comes to baseball. We all know how it affects their body, but it’s never been fully proven when it comes to enhancing performance.

Guys like Bonds, McGuire, etc. were all simply the poster children. Plenty of players the casual fan has never heard of have been caught taking these performance enhancing drugs, or continue to take them without being caught. Difference is, these players remain unknown because they’re not good (meaning there’s no effect whatsoever when it comes to these drugs and their performance), and the “superstars” get crucified because people are ignorant enough to think these ‘enhancers’ made them who they are.

You can make an argument for steroids because they make you physically stronger (still no known correlation between being physically stronger and performance), but there’s a ton of drugs that keep players on the field and perform better by reducing the effects of injury, such as a cortisone shot the knee. If you play with that bad knee, it’s going to effect your performance in a negative way. Take that shot, and it’s clearly improving your performance if it helps your knee heal rapidly, or eases the pain. Once again though, this comes down to banned vs. not banned, or “cheating” vs. medicine.

Just another example of why people need to do their own research and not let the media form their opinion for them.

As a patient, I have received Toradol myself, and I never felt invincible. The pain was dulled, but not eliminated. We’re not talking Demerol or Oxycontin.

Steroids are drugs that make you stronger than you were before, so they’re peformance enhancers

Except this isn’t entirely true. Steroids allow you to work out harder and longer than before to increase muscle mass thus providing additional benefits. It’s not as simple as Average Player + Steroids = Barry Bonds.

You need to work out, you need to increase strength, you need to increase speed. Steroids allow you to do this longer, with more weight thus increasing the benefit.

It’s this small quibble that many of us like to point out in the hypocrisy of the steroid outrage. There are a ton of drugs that are used for similar means, but they don’t get anywhere near the coverage that PEDs do.

If someone is going to try to make this distinction, they are splitting hairs…..and as pointed out above, the long-term effects of drugs like this (and even cortisone) are worse than for anabolic steroids.

It’s “cheating” because MLB says it’s cheating. If they banned Oreos, would that suddenly make sandwich cookies “bad”?

Toradal takes away the pain so he can play. HGH and steroids allow the body to recover so he can play. Why split hairs?