Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat

The Science Behind Drugs in Sport

De: Chris Cooper

Narrado por: Kieran Phoenix

Drugs in sport are big news and the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport is common. Here, Chris Cooper, a top biochemist at the University of Essex, looks at the science behind drugs in sport. Using the performance of top athletes, Cooper begins by outlining the limits of human performance. Showing the basic problems of human biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he looks at what stops us running faster, throwing longer, or jumping higher. Using these evidence-based arguments he shows what the body can, and cannot, do. There is much curiosity about why certain substances are used, how they are detected, and whether they truly have an effect on the body. Cooper explains how these drugs work and the challenges of testing for them, putting in to context whether the 'doping' methods of choice are worth the risk or the effort.

Exploring the moral, political, and ethical issues involved in controlling drug use, Cooper addresses questions such as 'What is cheating?', 'What compounds are legal and why?', 'Why do the classification systems change all the time?', and 'Should all chemicals be legal, and what effect would this have on sport?'. Looking forward, he examines the recent work to study the physical limitations of rat and mice behaviour. He shows that, remarkably, simple genetic experiments producing 'supermice' suggest that there may be ways of improving human performance too, raising ethical and moral questions for the future of sport.

©2012 Chris Cooper (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

interesting subject ruined by narrator

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Longtime Audible users will know that on rare occasions a narrator can completely ruin a book. That is the case here. I was excited to learn about the subject, but the narration of this book is nearly unbearable.

The narrator reads every sentence like he is announcing the headline of an upcoming news story, seems to have no idea what he is talking about, and cannot connect ideas between sentences. It almost sounded like the book was being read by an illiterate high school student making a joke out of reading in class by trying to draw attention to himself.

I feel sorry for the author.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Different Narrator

Would you be willing to try another one of Kieran Phoenix’s performances?

No

Possibly an ok book ruined by awful execution

The book itself was quite technical in parts so was tough to transmit to the audio format. However, this was just made worse by awful awful narration and many references to diagrams that obviously the listener couldn't see. These diagrams should have been made available as a pdf like many other audiobooks do. Narration was truly woeful with many mispronunciations so bad they have to be heard to be believed.

Hard to get past these issues. The best audiobooks consider the format translation from print to audio. This book just seemed like it was decided just to pick the quickest and crudest way possible to try to cash in on the audiobook market