I think it's not just that we take joy in "high levels of skill and human achievement" that are the result of "extraordinary and undeserved pieces of luck" but, perhaps even more so, in such performances that are the result of extraordinary dedication. Suppose it turned out that, shortly after he was diagnosed with cancern, Lance Armstrong sold his soul to Satan in exchange for the cycling skills requried for a sequence of Tour de France victories. (Obviously, I am not suggesting that any such thing might have happend.) Speaking just for myself, I'd regard that as a form of cheating, and I'd take no pleasure whatsoever in Armstrong's accomplishments. They wouldn't have been his accomplishments, in the relevant sense. What makes his story gripping is precisely the fact that he was able to return from death's door to dominate his sport because of his dedication to doing so and not because Satan was giving him an unfair advantage.

Now obviously, if Armstrong took "performance-enchancing" drugs (and, again, I am not suggesting that he did), then his dominance would hardly have been entirely the result of his doing so: Work was still required. But, speaking for myself, my admiration for his accomplishments would be diminished to the extent that his taking such drugs was a factor. And given the small margins involved, one would suppose it quite possible that they were a large factor indeed.

There also seem to me to be some false empirical assumptions here. The use of, say, amphetamines in baseball does not "level the playing field" in any plausible sense I can imagine, and I don't myself see why the use of human growth hormone does so, either. Were Mark McGwire and José Canseco just "leveling the playing field"? With whom? Hercules? In their drug-laden primes, the two of them hardly looked like people. The plain truth, I'm afraid, is that people who use such substances are not trying to "level the playing field". They're trying to gain an advantage.

The crucial question, to me, however, is whether someone who is not prepared to accept the significant risks the use of "performance-enhancing" drugs imposes ought therefore to be denied the ability to compete. And although I do not find it entirely easy to say why—obviously, some of the preceding is relevant, but hardly sufficient—I myself have a strong intuition that the answer is "No".