Drugs and sports – nowadays, it feels like you can’t have one without the other.
With the Olympics right around the corner, and football season starting soon, the media is going wild over all of these drug scandals. Most notable is the Russian Olympic track and field team, recently revealed as sponsored by the government in a doping scandal.
Olympic athletes train for the moment to compete at the biggest stage their entire life, and most will do anything for a gold medal. So what’s wrong with abusing a performance enhancer?
Many athletes get away with it. There hasn’t been an Olympics that wasn’t controversial.
According to Villanova University, the first reported case of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) was in 1904. An athlete by the name of Thomas Hicks ingests strychnine during the Olympic Marathon.
In the early 1900s, steroids, human growth hormones and amphetamines were not an option. All of those drugs take years to severely damage an athlete’s health, unlike strychnine, which is a fast-acting chemical.
Strychnine (now found in rat poison) was reportedly injected by Hicks, who won the gold medal, despite almost killing himself. The drug creates muscle convulsions in the human body, especially on the back, legs and face.
Doping with strychnine means that a small amount of stimulus can keep the body going. It is very useful for long days and races that require endurance. Even knowing the drug could kill him, Hicks still risked it all for a gold.
PEDs wouldn’t be in the public eye until 50 years later, when the world was introduced to steroids. In 1954, a Soviet weightlifting team doctor revealed he was administrating testosterone injections on his lifters.
Dr. Ziegler, began his research on finding a substance that could provide better benefits than testosterone without side-effects. Anabolic steroids and other PEDs were used widely in many sports shortly after their discovery. All PEDs were banned in 1975 by the international Olympic Committee.
Since the discovery of steroids, amphetamines and other PEDs, the athletes who use them have been given an unfair advantage. And in today’s world, not much has changed.
Every year, there are many athletes caught using PEDs, and this year is no different. Due to the state-sponsored doping operation in Russia, 100 out of the 387-strong team is banned from competing this year because of “doping.”
Teams and individuals will do anything to win, and if “everyone else” is using PEDs, it may seem OK. However, many athletes suffer moderate to severe consequences down the line.
PEDs have the ability or potential to drastically alter the human body, improving athletic performance. However, these same drugs can be extremely dangerous, and in some cases, deadly.
Below are side effects of various performance enhancing drugs.
Anabolic steroids (including testosterone)
Acne
Male pattern baldness
Liver damage
Premature closure of growth centers of long bones which may result in stunted growth
Increased aggressiveness and sexual appetite, sometimes resulting in abnormal sexual and criminal behaviour (roid rage)
Withdrawal from anabolic steroids can cause depression and in some cases suicide
Peptide hormones, growth factors, and related substances
Hypertension
Blood cancers
Anemia
Strokes
Heart attacks
Pulmonary embolism
Thyroid problems
HGH (Human Growth Hormone)
Severe headaches
Loss of vision
High blood pressure and heart failure
Diabetes and tumors
Crippling arthritis
Stimulants (amphetamine)
Insomnia
Anxiety
Weight loss
Dependence or addiction
Dehydration
Tremors
Increased heart rate and blood pressure
Increased risk of stroke, heart attack and cardiac arrhythmia
Cheating will always be a part of sports, whether we like it or not. PEDs are easily available, and even encouraged in some countries.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where winning by any means necessary is the number one priority. Even some of the most well-respected athletes have been revealed as dopers, such as in the rise and demise of Lance Armstrong.
One of the world’s top athletes, Armstrong was a miracle story, and thought to be the greatest athlete of our time. For a while, bright yellow ‘Livestrong’ bracelets, a testament to his strength in beating cancer, were visible everywhere.
But Armstrong would later admit it himself – he was a bully and a cheater. He went from being the world’s biggest super hero to the sporting world’s darkest villain.
While he wasn’t the only one cheating in the cycling world, a hero like Armstrong took disappointment to the next level. Armstrong had a laundry list of banned substances he used to get an advantage.
In the interview in which he was exposed by Oprah Winfrey, the world found out about his PED history:
“Armstrong admitted using testosterone and human growth hormone, as well as EPO — a hormone naturally produced by human kidneys to stimulate red blood cell production. It increases the amount of oxygen that can be delivered to muscles, improving recovery and endurance.”
Nothing has changed in the sports world. Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and the great Mark McGwire are just a few notable names of athletes caught doping in Major League Baseball.
Shawne Merriman, Dwayne Bowe and Julius Peppers were all suspended from the NFL for steroid use.
And hundreds of Olympian athletes in the past have been suspended for PEDs. There has even been incidents of deaths caused by PED abuse.
While athletes are no longer abusing rat poison, they are still taking harmful substances that are equally as detrimental in the long run. Performance enhancing drugs are banned substances for a reason, but unfortunately, it appears these scandals will keep occurring, even to the best of us.
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