The Olympics and Blood Doping
The Olympics are not known to be a clean event to any degree. What would you expect when you have all of the world’s top athletes in one place? Athletes have been taught from a young age to win no matter the consequences. The Olympics provide an environment where performance enhancing drugs are everywhere you look. What do the Olympic officials do about this? Close to nothing. The tests seem to be very inconsistent and rarely reliable. The Olympics are full of athletes using performance enhancing drugs and there isn’t much the officials or athletes are or want to do anything about it. Blood doping is becoming more and more common in all athletics. So what exactly is blood doping? “taking drugs to improve athletic performance. This form of cheating is also known as “doping””(“Know Your” 6). So doping is basically using performance enhancing drugs to help athletes win in their sport. Doping is considered cheating in sports. This is because it gives one person an unfair advantage over the other athletes who do not use these drugs. Now why do athletes use these exactly. Well we live in a culture that rewards them. “The desire to succeed at all costs is deeply hardwired in an Olympic athlete” (Schmaltz "Gaming" 138). See when an Olympic hopeful doesn’t win they are ridiculed for the lost. They are praised when they win. We as spectators give them this praise and that is what they want overall. They want victory and praise. Ever since they began their journey that is all they ever wanted. Why don’t these athletes get caught? Well it all has to do with the way they are tested and if the results are ever reported. “Lance Armstrong, the world’s most notorious dope, never tested positive--and her estimates he took more than 500 drug tests over the course of his career, many of them in international Olympic labs” (Schmaltz 104). The drug tests never caught Mr. Armstrong doping even though he was tested many times in state of the art testing labs. This tells us that is either someone or multiple people on the inside that hid the results; or the tests really never did detect anything in his body that is performance enhancing. Not all Olympic athletes use these performance enhancing drugs. Contrary to popular opinion. Deedee Trotter, Olympic medalist retorted to a rude comment on an airplane “Hey--excuse me, I’m sorry, but that’s not true. I’m a professional athlete and Olympic gold medalist, and I’m not on drugs. I’ve never even considered it” (Aschwanden 56). See Trotter was upset because of the stereotype that all professional athletes are on drugs. She wanted to prove a point that not everyone is and after this conversation she created a foundation called “Test Me, I’m Clean!”. Trotter wanted to prove her point that not everyone uses performance enhancing drugs. What happens to the sponsorships if these athletes do get caught. Professionals don’t want to sponsor athletes who are cheating in their game. “The ISA’s main concern with pot then is not really with illegal performance enhancement, but with image” (Houseman 50). Sponsors don’t want to dirty their name with a pot smoking athlete or any drug using athlete for that matter. Picture yourself as a business owner and you’re sponsoring an athlete. This athlete has won multiple medals and all of a …show more content…
“Jensen’s death in 1960 convinced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that drug use among athletes had to be stopped. But the IOC’s determination has been outstripped by the willingness of athletes” (Hamilton and Lewis 62). Again this is an example of how much the athletes are willing to use drugs. “Athletes have stayed well ahead of the IOC’s “doping controls,” ingesting ever more powerful and hard-to-detect drugs. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where 10,500 athletes competed, a state-of-the-art drug lab reported only two positive tests for banned substances” (Hamilton and Lewis 62). Even though it was a state of the art lab it only caught two athletes that were using drugs when in all reality there was probably many more athletes on drugs at the time. The technology and the officials are behind their athletes and they are taking advantage of
The Olympics are not known to be a clean event to any degree. What would you expect when you have all of the world’s top athletes in one place? Athletes have been taught from a young age to win no matter the consequences. The Olympics provide an environment where performance enhancing drugs are everywhere you look. What do the Olympic officials do about this? Close to nothing. The tests seem to be very inconsistent and rarely reliable. The Olympics are full of athletes using performance enhancing drugs and there isn’t much the officials or athletes are or want to do anything about it. Blood doping is becoming more and more common in all athletics. So what exactly is blood doping? “taking drugs to improve athletic performance. This form of cheating is also known as “doping””(“Know Your” 6). So doping is basically using performance enhancing drugs to help athletes win in their sport. Doping is considered cheating in sports. This is because it gives one person an unfair advantage over the other athletes who do not use these drugs. Now why do athletes use these exactly. Well we live in a culture that rewards them. “The desire to succeed at all costs is deeply hardwired in an Olympic athlete” (Schmaltz "Gaming" 138). See when an Olympic hopeful doesn’t win they are ridiculed for the lost. They are praised when they win. We as spectators give them this praise and that is what they want overall. They want victory and praise. Ever since they began their journey that is all they ever wanted. Why don’t these athletes get caught? Well it all has to do with the way they are tested and if the results are ever reported. “Lance Armstrong, the world’s most notorious dope, never tested positive--and her estimates he took more than 500 drug tests over the course of his career, many of them in international Olympic labs” (Schmaltz 104). The drug tests never caught Mr. Armstrong doping even though he was tested many times in state of the art testing labs. This tells us that is either someone or multiple people on the inside that hid the results; or the tests really never did detect anything in his body that is performance enhancing. Not all Olympic athletes use these performance enhancing drugs. Contrary to popular opinion. Deedee Trotter, Olympic medalist retorted to a rude comment on an airplane “Hey--excuse me, I’m sorry, but that’s not true. I’m a professional athlete and Olympic gold medalist, and I’m not on drugs. I’ve never even considered it” (Aschwanden 56). See Trotter was upset because of the stereotype that all professional athletes are on drugs. She wanted to prove a point that not everyone is and after this conversation she created a foundation called “Test Me, I’m Clean!”. Trotter wanted to prove her point that not everyone uses performance enhancing drugs. What happens to the sponsorships if these athletes do get caught. Professionals don’t want to sponsor athletes who are cheating in their game. “The ISA’s main concern with pot then is not really with illegal performance enhancement, but with image” (Houseman 50). Sponsors don’t want to dirty their name with a pot smoking athlete or any drug using athlete for that matter. Picture yourself as a business owner and you’re sponsoring an athlete. This athlete has won multiple medals and all of a …show more content…
“Jensen’s death in 1960 convinced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that drug use among athletes had to be stopped. But the IOC’s determination has been outstripped by the willingness of athletes” (Hamilton and Lewis 62). Again this is an example of how much the athletes are willing to use drugs. “Athletes have stayed well ahead of the IOC’s “doping controls,” ingesting ever more powerful and hard-to-detect drugs. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where 10,500 athletes competed, a state-of-the-art drug lab reported only two positive tests for banned substances” (Hamilton and Lewis 62). Even though it was a state of the art lab it only caught two athletes that were using drugs when in all reality there was probably many more athletes on drugs at the time. The technology and the officials are behind their athletes and they are taking advantage of