They lose the race and people will take that into account and try not to reproduce those results. It would balance out over time. There'd always be more than other sports, but sports doing bad things to their participants isn't unique. People are completely fine with the brain damage caused by sports like (US) football or boxing for example.
> People are completely fine with the brain damage caused by sports like (US) football
This is totally untrue.
Football is currently in decline, with the greatest drop in youth participation[1]. A major factor seems to be the NFL's inability to keep the stories of brain damage quiet. These things take time but I think there's a good chance the brain damage is going to kill football as a popular sport.
If the health-risks were the same (and they aren’t) I don’t think we’d be complaining as much. We don’t want to encourage people compromising their health like this; but it’s not the elite-athletes I’m worried about, but their millions of followers - think: kids doing high-school athletics - or people who are inspired by major sporting events to start doing exercise - it benefits no-one by implicitly encouraging everyone to do sports PEDs.
IMB4 anyone suggests that a Vyvanse prescription is equivalent to sports PEDs, despite both being significant risks to heart-health.