Death on the Roman road

When I rowed at the Olympics, I wanted to win. That six minutes of my life seemed so crucial, it developed an importance beyond reason. It would either be my crowning moment or a moment of despair. I didn't look beyond it. Every second of all four years that had gone before was going to be vindicated, or not, by what happened next. It shouldn't be like that but in the grip of competitive desire that is how an athlete feels.

If they felt less committed, I don't think they'd stand a chance.

I remember my rowing team-mate Matt Pinsent saying to me once that if someone gave him the option of trading in all his world championship victories and all the Olympic medals he had already won, just to guarantee the next Olympic gold, he'd do it. That is how much the next one always matters in the mind of an athlete.

I was one of the lucky ones. I have failed at many things but I never did feel the despair of Olympic failure, nor a sense of hopelessness in competition. But for those people who did, the temptation to seek help by whatever means possible is completely explicable.

As for sport in 1960, there was no drugs ban. Jensen was able, and maybe felt entitled, to seek help where he could, and history suggests that performance enhancers were common in his sport. At least his terrible death helped prompt the debate about athletes taking drugs, and the bans came in within a decade.

A good thing, too. While my understanding of drug cheats is real, I hate what it does to sport. If we didn't try to put the brakes on the cheats, there is no limit to the freaks we could be chemically producing. I assume some athletes are taking drugs now. Perhaps, with modern technology, they think the risks are vastly reduced. Perhaps they are. But there is still the fact that they are destroying, if not their own bodies, the whole concept of sport.

I am grateful for the sake of sport that drug bans exist and there is no free-for-all, whatever some of the libertarians may say. We can see in this picture where free-for-alls may get you - dying by a roadside at the age of 23. I can see now that no sporting moment, however great, is worth this destruction. I could see in my prime that drug abuse was not an option. But if I had been a nearly man, tantalised by a prize I couldn't reach by natural means, and surrounded by a drug-taking culture, would I have been so brave?

I like to think I would, but who knows themselves that well? I certainly don't blame Jensen. I feel very, very sorry for him.

Great Olympic Moments by Steve Redgrave is published by Headline, £20.