Drug Use
in Sports
The manifold information is spread out around the
Globe with intimidating pace. Thus, the resources on drugs and dietary
supplements are no more the veritable arena only for pharmacists. Nowadays,
doping is an inseparable part of professional sport. Never before was it that
popular among sportsmen, although the use of drugs in order to enhance
performance in sports has certainly occurred since the time of the original
Olympic Games. Even then sport success guaranteed the glory, adoration
and........... lots of money.
Sally
Jenkins "Winning, Cheating Have
Ancient Roots," Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2007
The check of the relevance of achieving quick and
easy success has yield the surprising and at the same time frightening result -
majority of professional sportsmen are willing to give up on life in order to
get the unbelievable results. This test, called Goldman's dillema, has been
carried out in years 1982-1995 and relied on the simple question posed by
famous physician, osteopath and publicist: "If I had a
magic drug that was so fantastic that if you took it once you would win every
competition you would enter from the Olympic Decathlon to the Mr Universe, for
the next five years but it had one minor drawback, it would kill you five years
after you took it, would you still take the drug?". The target
was the athletics' elite of which in the effect more than a half said they
would take it.
Novadays, the efforts that should stop athletes
using PEDs (performence enhancing drugs) are found to be unproductive and bound
to fail. The question is should PED be
accepted in sports? Proponents claims that it is the part of evolution, just
like the improvement in technique and technology. Moreover it is athlete's own
decision to take them or not. They also claim that the health risk was much
overstated. On the other hand, opponents find it as gaining an unfair advantage over other
competitors, as well as it violates the spirit of competition. Therefore they
are strongly against weakening the efforts of discarding PEDs from sports once
and for all.
1.
How much are individuals able
to devote in order to succeed?
2.
Does winning with the use of
not permitted ways make the winner equally satisfied as in the case of fair
competition?
3.
What is your own definition of
'winning'?
4.
Is winning, understood in most
widely known meaning, or a way (practice etc.) leading to the success or even
the failure the most important factor in sport?
5.
Are you for or against using
PEDs in sports? Why/why not?
Comments
I am agains using PEDs in sports, because it is unhealthy and for me it is cheating. We are measuring capabilities of people that they achieved with many trainings not the effectiveness of drugs taken by them.
Win reaches by hard work is better than by PEDs, because without PEDs we are weak.
I don't really care about sports and I don't watch any sport competitions.
I think the whole point of sports is to be the best and to truly evaluate people's abilities they should stand an equal chance and the use of illegal substances alters that. I don't really care that much but if people want to compete they should do it fairly. That's why women and men compete separately.
So if you are using drugs and take part in any sport activity you can compare yourself to person who smokes and eat healthy food. Sooner or later he will get cancer or other illness. Good luck to all fair play players and have fun.
I guess great number of athletes doesn't care about sportsmanship and fair play rules, the only thing that matters is to beat the others and not get caught. Probably PEDs become so common that vast majority of takers doesn't even treat it as a way of cheating. Recent PEDs affairs shows that sports culture is on the downfall.
Generally speaking I'm not a big fan of sports, but I think it's a good thing that PEDs are illegal. Besides, for the athletes, I think there's more to lose than to gain.
A shortcut isn't good in any case if combined with a cheat and I don't mean just sport. Everything should be achieved by our hard work. In my opinion when we work hard for something, our satisfaction of goal achieved is higher.
Of course one could say that we let all the athletes take PEDs and it will be fair, but what's the point?
As Machiavelli said: 'goal justifies the means'. In professional sports there is no place for losers and participant and no one is satisfied with 'at least you tried' rank.
Besides lets cut off this mumbling about 'unfair practice', champion is the person that can show 100% of his or her abilities. Drugs only help to increase the final results, but there is no way they will free sportsman from hours of working out, traumas and pushing himself beyond the natural boundaries. Besides, professional sport is a tough and very short career - professional sportsmen have around 10-15 years to demonstrate the best possible results, they have no opportunity to master their skills through the whole life (if you are not playing chess or videogames).
As Arnold Schwarzenegger said: 'I took steroids and they helped me a lot, but everything I've reached, was possible only with dedication and hard work'. We can call it unfair, but no one cares.
Sometimes it looks like that World Anti-Doping Agency just works with several supplements producers and some of them know before decisions are publicly available.
It's hard to refer to your second question - perhaps the sportsmen do feel satisfaction even when they cheat, because they wouldn't probably take any PEDs if it was otherwise?...
Or you're working on your results and you are the best or not take up a sport if you have to cheat. So the person who wins thanks to the "boosters" is the biggest loser.
2. Probably yes cause one was aware of taking PED to achieve a certain goal so probably one is satisfied and happy from his/her success. Maybe after a while one might regret doing so.
3. My definition of winning is achieving a goal after spending enough time, doubling the efforts for practice and struggling with our minds to imply master mindset in them in order to purely win with others and be absolutely satisfied with receiving a reward which would be a proper reward for energy I've put in.
4. Everything is important in sports and as long as you a are able to take a proper lesson and feedback from your doing and set your sails in the direction of improvement, not winning, you are doing good.
5. There is no doubt that I'm against using PED in sports cause I'm some kind of purist which states that whatever you want to achieve in your life, you already have everything what you need to achieve it.
It's cheating yourself just as much everyone around you.
I'm not interested sports too much but I think that doping is not as comon as you make it to be. While I heard abotu few controversies regarding it, it always seemed to me that organizers are very strict about it... and frankly, it's hard for me to imagine Adam Małysz putting steroids in his banana sandwich.
For example there are women that are able to became firefighters but if they wouldn't be able to pass the same test that every firefighter has to pass, it would be a dangerous decision to let them become one. It puts people's lives at risk.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3066710/Woman-set-FDNY-firefighter-spite-failing-grueling-physical-fitness-test.html
I think that is not honest and sportsmen, which uses it should be excluded.
There are many different types of people. Some are satisfied with mediocrity, others are able to give up their lives to pursue their dreams and there are also all the options in between. Last year I watched a great movie about a way to success - Whiplash. If you didn’t watch it – please do!
I think that winning fair and square is the most satisfying and you cannot be truly happy about it if you cheated to succeed. The other thing is being constantly worried that you may get exposed and even the slightest doubt about the fairness of your game will be remembered as a part of you and what you do.
For me winning is being the best in a given category and the more you try to achieve it the more satisfactory it is for you.
If sport is treated as a way to leading a healthy life then winning is not essential. However, it is good to challenge yourself – it brings the feel of winning and thus happiness (physical effort also releases endorphins – the hormone of happiness, so double happiness! yay). Nothing bad will happen if you miss a practice or run one kilometre less. If you make money out of it then it is a totally different thing – winning brings you fame, sponsors and more money and you may make a living of the thing you like doing.
I am against using PEDs in sports. Also, I am for the idea of putting some ordinary people for example in the Olympics for bringing up the contrast between us and professional sportsmen to show us how good they really are;) If sport is something that defines you – don’t cheat.
Certainly there are many cases when the use of drugs will not be revealed but Lance Armstrong story should be a warning for all athletes.
Also I do believe that in 50 years from now, cybernetic enhancements are going to be the next big thing in sports. Now, apart from being a bit terrifying this could be something even more interesting to watch!
Drugs are the sane person response to this nonsense tradition of competition sports.
Because what is the purpose of sports? - to complete some pointless task in the most efficient way.
Is it for healthy lifestyle? - in case of professional sports, its not too healthy, no doubts.
So what we're trying to achieve here?
The 'fair competition' don't really apply, cause everybody is born different, there is no way for them to be equal. So... are sports the contest of best genetics? Basically it looks this way.