Thu, Sep 18, 2008 page18

• FEATURE: Athletes keen to hide smoking habit

  PUFFING AWAY A number of athletes have managed to combine sporting excellence with a cigarette habit. Is it possible that being super-fit lessens the risks of smoking?

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  It’s easy to view super-fit runners who spend hours each week pounding pavements as vice-free obsessives, but this is not always true. A poll conducted by Runner’s World magazine in the US revealed that 6 percent of the 2,500 runners who responded smoked regularly, 2 percent of them in secret so their jogging buddies would not find out.

  Even more surprising, perhaps, is that Bart Yasso, the magazine’s chief running officer, says the results were not entirely unexpected. Yasso, who quit years ago, says he knows plenty of athletic types who smoke.

  “They are very secretive,” he says. “I know they are not proud of it.”

  And it’s not just runners. Other sports have more than their fair share of nicotine addicts.

  In soccer, the habit has been rife for decades. This summer Wayne Rooney was pictured smoking in Las Vegas, while England goalkeeper David James has confessed to a 15-year, 20-a-day habit.

  “I spent most of my career puffing away on fags: after training, before matches and even on the team coach,” he said.

  Former Manchester United star Fabien Barthez was a high-profile smoker, as was Socrates, the former Brazilian captain, who allegedly smoked two packets a day during his playing career.

  Even some Olympic competitors are at it. While smoking is banned in the Olympic Village, there are designated smoking areas.

  There are some sports in which many competitors routinely calm their pre-event nerves by lighting up. Shirley Strong, a British hurdler who won a silver medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, admitted to having a regular post-race cigarette. Excuses abound as to why people in sport feel the need for nicotine. Some claim they need to smoke as it helps to keep their weight down. Others mistakenly believe it “opens up the lungs” and helps them to relax.

  Certainly, for those who can’t give up, exercise offers some protective effects against the risks of cigarette smoking. In a 2006 study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, scientists from the universities of Minnesota and Pennsylvania showed that women who were current or former smokers and who also did high levels of physical activity were less likely to suffer from lung cancer than sedentary ex-smokers.

  “When you exercise, that improves your cardiovascular function and your HDL cholesterol and generally it’s just good for you,” says Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine in the cardiology department of the University of California.

  “So if you smoke and exercise you are going to be better off than if you smoke and don’t exercise,” he said.

  Not surprisingly, though, smoking does not enhance athletic performance. While the cardiovascular system is worst hit, there is evidence that smoking also leads to a decrease in muscle strength and volume of muscle fibers, affecting speed and power.

  There are always exceptions to the rule, however. Simon Garner, a former professional soccer player who played for Blackburn Rovers and West Brom in the 1980s and 1990s, was a smoker when he first signed for Blackburn.

  “It didn’t go down well with my coaches and managers, but I carried on and I went on to become Blackburn’s all-time leading League goalscorer,” he says. “As long as I was scoring goals, they put up with me being a smoker. One of them, Kenny Dalglish, even suggested it might adversely affect my performances if I gave up.”

  Garner says he knew of “plenty of players who enjoyed a crafty fag, but never in public.”

  Once he was asked to do a lung capacity test, a measure of aerobic fitness and ability, with his team-mates.

  “There were 20 other players of various ages, ranging from 18 to 35 years who took part,” Garner says. “The biggest shock was that I was the old smoker and came out with the best lung capacity of them all.”
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