Blood Doping Research Paper
Dope or Quit "Doping means to make use of physiological substances in immoderate quantity or abnormal method from healthy people whose only aim is to obtain an artificial increase of the performance during the competition" (Vittozzi). Doping has been around for more than 100 years now, and has had many different forms such as using caffeine for a simple boost, to more serious things like anabolic steroids or blood doping. Blood doping is one of the many different ways athletes will increase their performance and ability in a sport, but it is more known to be used in cycling. As a sport progresses over the years, so do the athletes. They train and work harder in order to beat out competition and win. However there is only so far someone
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can go before they reach their peak, and then what? This sport is their life, their career, and now they’re falling behind. Most athletes find themselves in this dilemma, but there is a solution: doping. Although these athletes are already extremely gifted with talent and train very hard, there is only so much they can do. Do these elite athletes up and quit their life’s passion, continue and hope to still succeed in some small way, or to dope and win? These are a few questions that help us understand more as to why an athlete might be tempted to dope.
Michael Shermer, a once a pro-cyclist, relates to most athletes by stating, “For a competitive cyclist, there is nothing more physically crushing and psychologically demoralizing than getting dropped by your competitors on a climb” (Shermer). Athletes compete to win, not to lose or be second place. They do not put in hours and hours of strenuous workouts every week to be ‘almost’ the best. According to Shermer, “The convergence of evidence leads me to conclude that in cycling, as well as in baseball, football, and track and field, most of the top competitors of the past two decades have been using performance-enhancing drugs.” So when provided the question to dope or quit their life’s passion, do ethics or morals come to these top athlete’s minds when everyone else is doing it? In our rapidly growing sports industry, athletes are being forced with the choice of using damaging drugs to increase their ability, to continually improve in order to keep up with their competition, and of course to either just dope or quit.
Drugs and Their Abilities As mentioned previously, blood doping is one of the many new ways to enhance your performance. Doping alone though is often used as a more general term for any kind of performance enhancing drugs. “Doping is as old as the sport of cycling itself. As early as the nineteenth century, cyclists competing in the grueling ‘six-day’ races concocted cocktails of caffeine, strychnine, and cocaine to improve their performance” (Hailey). It is not new, but there are new drugs used for doping that are coming out all the time and are becoming more popular. Yet doping once wasn’t so worrisome and heavily monitored in sports, not until the Festina affair in 1998 Tour De France which revealed “…a widespread network of systematic doping in professional cycling” (Hailey). They had found a large haul of doping products in the Festina cycling team’s van just before the race. This discovery led to an investigation not only of the Festina cycling team, but of other teams as well. (Vittozzi) The following year of this scandal World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was founded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). WADA’s purposes were to encourage fairness in sports and to prevent doping from happening in order to keep a level playing field. One of their goals is to “ensure harmonized, coordinated and effective anti-doping programs at the international and national level with regard to detection, deterrence and prevention of doping” (Hailey). They are continuing this fight today to keep sports drug free, but there are plenty of ways to slip under the radar and seem clean when tested. Although these different committees are working to keep things fair, there are still plenty of drugs that can go undetected while still increasing performance. A lot of naturally occurring hormones are being used such as testosterone and erythropoietin (also referred to as EPO). EPO promotes production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat anemia. “It also offered cyclists an easy endurance boost that helped them to excel in grueling stage races.” Conveniently enough, it is naturally produced by the kidney, so it goes unnoticed and is almost impossible to detect in a drug test (Callaway). This created a dilemma for cycling regulators because they had no way to detect this kind of doping, so they created the hematocrit test which would measure the percentage of blood volume made up of red blood cells. This test still could not detect everything and eventually led to the passport. “The passport started taking shape in 1999, when Robinson and Saugy began clinical studies of EPO doping in volunteers” (Callaway). They realized that instead of using the comparison of blood metrics when there are so many different body types and reactions, they could just regulate and watch individual athlete’s fluctuations in certain areas (Callaway). Athletes are getting more creative, and are continually changing methods of doping in order to stay in the game and not get caught. Every time scientists discover the new method and create a way to test it, the next new wonder drug is already being used by athletes and the vicious cycle continues. In Ewen Callaway’s essay, “Sports Doping: Racing Just To Keep Up,” he sums things up with, “…that tests, no matter how sophisticated, will never keep up with the most determined dopers.” Another dilemma athletes face even when they decide not to dope is that some coaches and medical staff approve of and even encourage doping. “Six athletes from the Finnish Ski Federation were discovered to have taken performance-enhancing drugs with the blessing of the medical staff and were disqualified at the Lahti World Cup in 2001” (Cheating). How are we to keep athletes from doping when their coaches are blatantly giving them drugs? It is hard enough to decide for yourself not to dope, but when there is extra pressure from a coach whom you admire greatly it becomes that much more difficult. “[T]his is a case of intentional doping of the “worst sort” and that it involved a conspiracy involving chemists, coaches, and athletes in a deliberate attempt to defraud fellow competitors and the world public” (Cheating). As stated in this essay, no longer do elite sports just involve coaches and athletes, but also chemists who are working to make new drugs that go undetected by the system. It has become a game of its own by outsmarting the system to see who can become the best with the newest of drugs. This is creating tremendous pressure on athletes to dope when it is so accepted by their fellow athletes, coaches and trainers, and yet frowned upon by the rest of the world.
Keeping Up With the Pack Over time, our world has progressed tremendously in many ways such as technology, agriculture, society, sports, and people. Many aspects of sports today are very different compared to a hundred years ago, and things are still changing at a rapid pace. We have new equipment to increase performance, different techniques for training, and even new sports that have been invented. In the world of sports, people are getting bigger, faster, stronger and more competitive. Pro-athletes are now considered elite athletes, or even to some extreme super-humans. Their training may seem extreme and very strenuous to the average person, but it is what athletes in the big leagues have to do in order to win and stay on top.
This creates a preconceived notion that athletes are better than us, and are or should be perfect in every aspect of their lives. People often place athletes on a pedestal and assume they can do no wrong, but they’re like everyone else in the world. They have limitations like everyone else that they have to overcome, and they do whatever it takes to overcome these limitations. William Moller discusses reasons as to why athletes feel the pressure to do drugs. One reason he mentions plainly is us; the audience, the fans, and anyone else who is watching these elite athletes every move. He uses the example of Alex Rodriguez who entered the majors as a phenomenon, yet later on was found guilty of using steroids to increase performance even though he was already considered one of the best players. His reasoning for Alex’s usage of drugs is once again us. He states, “We, the public, place the best athletes on pedestals, gods on high. And Alex is a prime candidate for such treatment” (Moller 608). Fans go to games, watch competitions, and watch fights to be wowed. A good point brought up is that, “[T]he entertainment value of sport is increasing for adults” (Cheating). Audiences can become bored with sporting events if they’re not constantly changing in a way that increases excitement for the audience. They want to see the best of the best compete, and frankly most do not care to know how the athlete got that way as long as they give the public something exciting to watch. Athletes know the outcome and side-effects of drugs, yet they continue to take them in order to be the best. Moller concludes that, “the vast majority of baseball players have used steroids…. This game is all about getting an edge…” (Moller 610).
The pressure to keep up with competition is immense and can cause athletes to question their morals and ethics. “Once a few elite riders ‘ defect’ from the rules (cheat) by doping to gain an advantage, their rule-abiding competitors must defect as well, leading to a cascade of defection through the ranks” (Shermer). If one athlete is doping this creates an unfair advantage, and therefore creates a mindset for the other athletes that they must dope as well in order to keep up with these other dopers; especially when they know the result of using performance enhancing drugs, and how they would be benefited from using them. “Because the drugs are so effective and many of them are so difficult (if not impossible) to detect, and because the payoffs for success are so great, the incentive to use banned substances is powerful” (Shermer).
Joe Papp, a professional cyclist, was banned at 32 for testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He was part of an organized team of dopers, and recalls after being handed a ‘secret black bag’,” Papp explained how a moral choice becomes an economic decision: "When you join a team with an organized doping program in place, you are simply given the drugs and a choice: take them to keep up or don 't take them and there is a good chance you will not have a career in cycling." Papp got a two year ban after testing positive, but these consequences weren’t near as worse as the social aspect. "The sport spit me out," he confessed. "A team becomes a band of brothers,… but with a team of dopers there 's an additional bond--a shared secret--and with that there is a code of silence. If you get busted, you keep your mouth shut. The moment I confessed I was renounced by my friends because in their mind I put them at risk. One guy called and threatened to kill me if I revealed that he doped.” Doping is no longer for a little boost to give athlete more energy, it is the way the game is played, and if you don’t play by the new rules you’re out (Shermer).
The Reality
Athletes are being caught left and right these days for drugs and other things.
It almost seems as if everyone is doing drugs, which just might be the case. How are we to control this epidemic of dopers and cheaters when it is the majority? Simply we either suspend an athlete for a season, a few games, or in worst case scenario, ban them from the sport entirely. One of the more recent and widely known scandals is Lance Armstrong who was stripped of his medals from various races such as the Tour De France and other competitions due to allegations of him and his team of doping before races. There is no clear evidence that Armstrong did in fact use steroids, but some teammates have confessed to doping along with Armstrong. Yet after fighting this argument and allegations for so many years Armstrong gave in and pleaded guilty. An article released from CNN talked about the continuous “witch hunt” to find evidence of Lance Armstrong of using drugs. “For years, Lance Armstrong carried a growing burden of doping accusations up increasingly steep hills, accumulating fans, wealth and respect along the way. On Wednesday, he crashed” (Pearson). The damage done to his career was losing his endorsement deal from Nike, which was worth millions, but even worse he lost his position as chairman for the Livestrong foundation which he started. According to a statement posted to the Livestrong group 's website, Armstrong stated that he left in order to, “spare the foundation any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding my cycling career,” (Pearson). Although there are many other cyclists and athletes who have doped in sports, Armstrong got the brunt of it because of his higher standing in the sport. No one should be above the law, but no one should be more prone to the
law.
Another example is of a pro-cyclist named Greg LeMond. LeMond had won the Tour De France three times and was planning to win his fourth win in 1991. LeMond claimed to be in the best shape of his life and had a good team around him, but he states, "Something was different in the 1991 Tour. There were riders from previous years who couldn 't stay on my wheel who were now dropping me on even modest climbs.” Although finishing in seventh that Tour, he still vowed to stay clean and to keep his sights positive for a win in the next year’s race. Sadly even with his positivity and morals standing high he and his team did not even finish the race. “Nondoping cyclists were burning out trying to keep up with their doping competitors” (Shermer). LeMond could have doped like everyone else and continue on to win five Tour De Frances in a row, but he did not. He refused to do so, and ended up with a DNF (“did not finish”) in 1994 due to more controversy regarding doping. If every athlete had the same mindset as LeMond doping wouldn’t be a problem. Sadly they don’t and this cause athletes such as LeMond to have to quit their career (Shermer).
The Real Question “Many players are convinced that ‘everyone else’ takes drugs and so have come to believe that they cannot remain competitive if they do not participate” (Shermer). Are we at a point in society where it has become impossible to have drug free sports? Is this the point we’ve come to? Maybe we have come to a point where all athletes have reached their peak; they can go no further so they must dope in order to keep the world’s attention. “But cheating is not limited to individual athletes; prestigious sport organizations have also been caught trying to bend the rules for their own advantage” (Cheating). Have sports become so tainted in their morals and ethics that there is no way back? Some may argue this, but others still believe we can change things and return the integrity of the game by continuing to keep athlete’s drug free. Shermer concludes his essay with his three ways to end doping in sports. “First, when other players are playing by the rules, the payoff for doing likewise must be greater than the payoff for cheating. Second, and perhaps more important, even when other players are cheating, the payoff for playing fair must be greater than the payoff for cheating. Players must not feel like suckers for following the rules.” Who knows if this will truly rid the world of sports of dopers, but it is worth a shot to salvage the integrity of the games.
There will always be some sort of conflict or wrongdoing going on with any good thing in the world. It is just the way the things work, and always will. We don’t always know what is going on in an athlete’s life or what is going through their mind when they decide to dope or not. Athletes, including everyone else, need to remember where they stand and what they believe to be right in the end, especially if we want to make a difference in this doping epidemic. Is there a way to end doping in sports and to return to an even playing field for all athletes? There is, but these things take time and effort, so we must truly dedicate ourselves to the problem if we want things to change for the better.
Works Cited
Callaway, Ewen. "Sports Doping: Racing Just To Keep Up." Nature 475.7356 (2011): 283-285. Academic Search Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2012.
“Cheating in Sport." Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 26 November 2012.
Hailey, Nicholas. "A False Start In The Race Against Doping In Sport: Concerns With Cycling 's Biological Passport." Duke Law Journal 61.2 (2011): 393-432. Academic Search Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2012.
Moller, William. “We, the Public, Place the Best Athletes on Pedestals.” 2009. Back to the Lake. Ed. Thomas Cooley. 2nd ed. New York.: Norton, 2012. 607-11. Print.
Pearson, Michael. "Doping scandal costs Lance Armstrong sponsors, charity role." CNN. Cable News Network, 22 2012. Web. 26 Nov 2012.
Shermer, Michael. "The Doping Dilemma." Scientific American 298.4 (2008): 82-89. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.
Vittozzi, Lorella. "Historical Evolution of Doping Phenomenon". ITA. Ioa.org.gr.17 July 2012. Web. 30 November 2012.
can go before they reach their peak, and then what? This sport is their life, their career, and now they’re falling behind. Most athletes find themselves in this dilemma, but there is a solution: doping. Although these athletes are already extremely gifted with talent and train very hard, there is only so much they can do. Do these elite athletes up and quit their life’s passion, continue and hope to still succeed in some small way, or to dope and win? These are a few questions that help us understand more as to why an athlete might be tempted to dope.
Michael Shermer, a once a pro-cyclist, relates to most athletes by stating, “For a competitive cyclist, there is nothing more physically crushing and psychologically demoralizing than getting dropped by your competitors on a climb” (Shermer). Athletes compete to win, not to lose or be second place. They do not put in hours and hours of strenuous workouts every week to be ‘almost’ the best. According to Shermer, “The convergence of evidence leads me to conclude that in cycling, as well as in baseball, football, and track and field, most of the top competitors of the past two decades have been using performance-enhancing drugs.” So when provided the question to dope or quit their life’s passion, do ethics or morals come to these top athlete’s minds when everyone else is doing it? In our rapidly growing sports industry, athletes are being forced with the choice of using damaging drugs to increase their ability, to continually improve in order to keep up with their competition, and of course to either just dope or quit.
Drugs and Their Abilities As mentioned previously, blood doping is one of the many new ways to enhance your performance. Doping alone though is often used as a more general term for any kind of performance enhancing drugs. “Doping is as old as the sport of cycling itself. As early as the nineteenth century, cyclists competing in the grueling ‘six-day’ races concocted cocktails of caffeine, strychnine, and cocaine to improve their performance” (Hailey). It is not new, but there are new drugs used for doping that are coming out all the time and are becoming more popular. Yet doping once wasn’t so worrisome and heavily monitored in sports, not until the Festina affair in 1998 Tour De France which revealed “…a widespread network of systematic doping in professional cycling” (Hailey). They had found a large haul of doping products in the Festina cycling team’s van just before the race. This discovery led to an investigation not only of the Festina cycling team, but of other teams as well. (Vittozzi) The following year of this scandal World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was founded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). WADA’s purposes were to encourage fairness in sports and to prevent doping from happening in order to keep a level playing field. One of their goals is to “ensure harmonized, coordinated and effective anti-doping programs at the international and national level with regard to detection, deterrence and prevention of doping” (Hailey). They are continuing this fight today to keep sports drug free, but there are plenty of ways to slip under the radar and seem clean when tested. Although these different committees are working to keep things fair, there are still plenty of drugs that can go undetected while still increasing performance. A lot of naturally occurring hormones are being used such as testosterone and erythropoietin (also referred to as EPO). EPO promotes production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat anemia. “It also offered cyclists an easy endurance boost that helped them to excel in grueling stage races.” Conveniently enough, it is naturally produced by the kidney, so it goes unnoticed and is almost impossible to detect in a drug test (Callaway). This created a dilemma for cycling regulators because they had no way to detect this kind of doping, so they created the hematocrit test which would measure the percentage of blood volume made up of red blood cells. This test still could not detect everything and eventually led to the passport. “The passport started taking shape in 1999, when Robinson and Saugy began clinical studies of EPO doping in volunteers” (Callaway). They realized that instead of using the comparison of blood metrics when there are so many different body types and reactions, they could just regulate and watch individual athlete’s fluctuations in certain areas (Callaway). Athletes are getting more creative, and are continually changing methods of doping in order to stay in the game and not get caught. Every time scientists discover the new method and create a way to test it, the next new wonder drug is already being used by athletes and the vicious cycle continues. In Ewen Callaway’s essay, “Sports Doping: Racing Just To Keep Up,” he sums things up with, “…that tests, no matter how sophisticated, will never keep up with the most determined dopers.” Another dilemma athletes face even when they decide not to dope is that some coaches and medical staff approve of and even encourage doping. “Six athletes from the Finnish Ski Federation were discovered to have taken performance-enhancing drugs with the blessing of the medical staff and were disqualified at the Lahti World Cup in 2001” (Cheating). How are we to keep athletes from doping when their coaches are blatantly giving them drugs? It is hard enough to decide for yourself not to dope, but when there is extra pressure from a coach whom you admire greatly it becomes that much more difficult. “[T]his is a case of intentional doping of the “worst sort” and that it involved a conspiracy involving chemists, coaches, and athletes in a deliberate attempt to defraud fellow competitors and the world public” (Cheating). As stated in this essay, no longer do elite sports just involve coaches and athletes, but also chemists who are working to make new drugs that go undetected by the system. It has become a game of its own by outsmarting the system to see who can become the best with the newest of drugs. This is creating tremendous pressure on athletes to dope when it is so accepted by their fellow athletes, coaches and trainers, and yet frowned upon by the rest of the world.
Keeping Up With the Pack Over time, our world has progressed tremendously in many ways such as technology, agriculture, society, sports, and people. Many aspects of sports today are very different compared to a hundred years ago, and things are still changing at a rapid pace. We have new equipment to increase performance, different techniques for training, and even new sports that have been invented. In the world of sports, people are getting bigger, faster, stronger and more competitive. Pro-athletes are now considered elite athletes, or even to some extreme super-humans. Their training may seem extreme and very strenuous to the average person, but it is what athletes in the big leagues have to do in order to win and stay on top.
This creates a preconceived notion that athletes are better than us, and are or should be perfect in every aspect of their lives. People often place athletes on a pedestal and assume they can do no wrong, but they’re like everyone else in the world. They have limitations like everyone else that they have to overcome, and they do whatever it takes to overcome these limitations. William Moller discusses reasons as to why athletes feel the pressure to do drugs. One reason he mentions plainly is us; the audience, the fans, and anyone else who is watching these elite athletes every move. He uses the example of Alex Rodriguez who entered the majors as a phenomenon, yet later on was found guilty of using steroids to increase performance even though he was already considered one of the best players. His reasoning for Alex’s usage of drugs is once again us. He states, “We, the public, place the best athletes on pedestals, gods on high. And Alex is a prime candidate for such treatment” (Moller 608). Fans go to games, watch competitions, and watch fights to be wowed. A good point brought up is that, “[T]he entertainment value of sport is increasing for adults” (Cheating). Audiences can become bored with sporting events if they’re not constantly changing in a way that increases excitement for the audience. They want to see the best of the best compete, and frankly most do not care to know how the athlete got that way as long as they give the public something exciting to watch. Athletes know the outcome and side-effects of drugs, yet they continue to take them in order to be the best. Moller concludes that, “the vast majority of baseball players have used steroids…. This game is all about getting an edge…” (Moller 610).
The pressure to keep up with competition is immense and can cause athletes to question their morals and ethics. “Once a few elite riders ‘ defect’ from the rules (cheat) by doping to gain an advantage, their rule-abiding competitors must defect as well, leading to a cascade of defection through the ranks” (Shermer). If one athlete is doping this creates an unfair advantage, and therefore creates a mindset for the other athletes that they must dope as well in order to keep up with these other dopers; especially when they know the result of using performance enhancing drugs, and how they would be benefited from using them. “Because the drugs are so effective and many of them are so difficult (if not impossible) to detect, and because the payoffs for success are so great, the incentive to use banned substances is powerful” (Shermer).
Joe Papp, a professional cyclist, was banned at 32 for testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He was part of an organized team of dopers, and recalls after being handed a ‘secret black bag’,” Papp explained how a moral choice becomes an economic decision: "When you join a team with an organized doping program in place, you are simply given the drugs and a choice: take them to keep up or don 't take them and there is a good chance you will not have a career in cycling." Papp got a two year ban after testing positive, but these consequences weren’t near as worse as the social aspect. "The sport spit me out," he confessed. "A team becomes a band of brothers,… but with a team of dopers there 's an additional bond--a shared secret--and with that there is a code of silence. If you get busted, you keep your mouth shut. The moment I confessed I was renounced by my friends because in their mind I put them at risk. One guy called and threatened to kill me if I revealed that he doped.” Doping is no longer for a little boost to give athlete more energy, it is the way the game is played, and if you don’t play by the new rules you’re out (Shermer).
The Reality
Athletes are being caught left and right these days for drugs and other things.
It almost seems as if everyone is doing drugs, which just might be the case. How are we to control this epidemic of dopers and cheaters when it is the majority? Simply we either suspend an athlete for a season, a few games, or in worst case scenario, ban them from the sport entirely. One of the more recent and widely known scandals is Lance Armstrong who was stripped of his medals from various races such as the Tour De France and other competitions due to allegations of him and his team of doping before races. There is no clear evidence that Armstrong did in fact use steroids, but some teammates have confessed to doping along with Armstrong. Yet after fighting this argument and allegations for so many years Armstrong gave in and pleaded guilty. An article released from CNN talked about the continuous “witch hunt” to find evidence of Lance Armstrong of using drugs. “For years, Lance Armstrong carried a growing burden of doping accusations up increasingly steep hills, accumulating fans, wealth and respect along the way. On Wednesday, he crashed” (Pearson). The damage done to his career was losing his endorsement deal from Nike, which was worth millions, but even worse he lost his position as chairman for the Livestrong foundation which he started. According to a statement posted to the Livestrong group 's website, Armstrong stated that he left in order to, “spare the foundation any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding my cycling career,” (Pearson). Although there are many other cyclists and athletes who have doped in sports, Armstrong got the brunt of it because of his higher standing in the sport. No one should be above the law, but no one should be more prone to the
law.
Another example is of a pro-cyclist named Greg LeMond. LeMond had won the Tour De France three times and was planning to win his fourth win in 1991. LeMond claimed to be in the best shape of his life and had a good team around him, but he states, "Something was different in the 1991 Tour. There were riders from previous years who couldn 't stay on my wheel who were now dropping me on even modest climbs.” Although finishing in seventh that Tour, he still vowed to stay clean and to keep his sights positive for a win in the next year’s race. Sadly even with his positivity and morals standing high he and his team did not even finish the race. “Nondoping cyclists were burning out trying to keep up with their doping competitors” (Shermer). LeMond could have doped like everyone else and continue on to win five Tour De Frances in a row, but he did not. He refused to do so, and ended up with a DNF (“did not finish”) in 1994 due to more controversy regarding doping. If every athlete had the same mindset as LeMond doping wouldn’t be a problem. Sadly they don’t and this cause athletes such as LeMond to have to quit their career (Shermer).
The Real Question “Many players are convinced that ‘everyone else’ takes drugs and so have come to believe that they cannot remain competitive if they do not participate” (Shermer). Are we at a point in society where it has become impossible to have drug free sports? Is this the point we’ve come to? Maybe we have come to a point where all athletes have reached their peak; they can go no further so they must dope in order to keep the world’s attention. “But cheating is not limited to individual athletes; prestigious sport organizations have also been caught trying to bend the rules for their own advantage” (Cheating). Have sports become so tainted in their morals and ethics that there is no way back? Some may argue this, but others still believe we can change things and return the integrity of the game by continuing to keep athlete’s drug free. Shermer concludes his essay with his three ways to end doping in sports. “First, when other players are playing by the rules, the payoff for doing likewise must be greater than the payoff for cheating. Second, and perhaps more important, even when other players are cheating, the payoff for playing fair must be greater than the payoff for cheating. Players must not feel like suckers for following the rules.” Who knows if this will truly rid the world of sports of dopers, but it is worth a shot to salvage the integrity of the games.
There will always be some sort of conflict or wrongdoing going on with any good thing in the world. It is just the way the things work, and always will. We don’t always know what is going on in an athlete’s life or what is going through their mind when they decide to dope or not. Athletes, including everyone else, need to remember where they stand and what they believe to be right in the end, especially if we want to make a difference in this doping epidemic. Is there a way to end doping in sports and to return to an even playing field for all athletes? There is, but these things take time and effort, so we must truly dedicate ourselves to the problem if we want things to change for the better.
Works Cited
Callaway, Ewen. "Sports Doping: Racing Just To Keep Up." Nature 475.7356 (2011): 283-285. Academic Search Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2012.
“Cheating in Sport." Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 26 November 2012.
Hailey, Nicholas. "A False Start In The Race Against Doping In Sport: Concerns With Cycling 's Biological Passport." Duke Law Journal 61.2 (2011): 393-432. Academic Search Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2012.
Moller, William. “We, the Public, Place the Best Athletes on Pedestals.” 2009. Back to the Lake. Ed. Thomas Cooley. 2nd ed. New York.: Norton, 2012. 607-11. Print.
Pearson, Michael. "Doping scandal costs Lance Armstrong sponsors, charity role." CNN. Cable News Network, 22 2012. Web. 26 Nov 2012.
Shermer, Michael. "The Doping Dilemma." Scientific American 298.4 (2008): 82-89. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.
Vittozzi, Lorella. "Historical Evolution of Doping Phenomenon". ITA. Ioa.org.gr.17 July 2012. Web. 30 November 2012.