Should drug use get a professional sports athlete banned for life?

Yes

7 of 29

by Sammy Stein

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If a professional athlete cheats, they should be banned for life.
Taking drugs is cheating, pure and simple.

Professional athletes are, of course, getting paid, and paid well for their skills so the best ones will naturally get the biggest financial rewards, the most profile competitions and the most lucrative post-career offers (coaching, endorsements and guest appearances) so the incentives to cheat are many and it is a strong athlete who accepts their waning prowess in their chosen sport. In a relatively short time period, athletes have to prove themselves worthy of adoration for long term security and many feel they have to win constantly to achieve this.

However, what makes a true athlete great is the fact that,without cheating, they attain peak performances, which deserve to be admired and well paid. They also deserve the status and admiration they attain because, they only attain this in any sport by many hours of practice and very hard work. They are dedicated and motivated by wanting to win and be the best. They also provide good role models for younger people. Dedication, hard work and winning is quite rightly admired and rewarded.

Those who surreptitiously gain honors by cheating do not deserve their place and should be exposed and banned for life. Never again should they be paid for what is essentially hoodwinking the public, their coaches in some cases (or sometimes it is a joint liaison) and their sponsors.

Each case, of course, needs to be investigated and assessed because it would be harsh to ban someone from a sport if they had inadvertently taken a drug - as was the case of a British skier who was found to have a banned substance in his blood stream after winning a Bronze medal in the Winter Olympics. He had inadvertently taken a nasal spray bought in the country where the games were taking place. The ingredients in this over the counter medication were slightly different- one of which was a banned substance. He had no idea and was simply naive as was proved later but if he had taken it deliberately a ban would have been appropriate.

There is an argument for banning people for a set period, the term according to the severity of their crime and how long they had been using drugs but what is relatively unknown is that athletes can benefit from their drug use even after a ban of, say two years. This is because if they had, for example, taken a steroid to increase body mass, they would still be benefiting from this increase in body mass years later. Therefore, it is impossible to tell whether their performances were due to even one use of drugs years ago or due to hard training without drugs.

Athletes found to have cheated face huge backlashes from both their fans and fellow athletes. There was the case of a British runner who recently returned from a 2 year ban who was apparently vilified to such an extent he withdrew from some competitions.

Another reason for banning athletes for life if they take drugs is to serve as a discouragement for their own safety. This was highlighted by the case of the British Swimmer who, several years ago, decided to track down the East German swimmer who had robbed her of the gold medal at the Olympics (she was later proved to have used drugs to enhance her performance - at the time this was accepted by the East German coaches as winning was everything and made a political statement). She did find her but, largely due to the use of drugs this swimmer was now a very sorry state, very masculine with huge muscles but otherwise poor health. The British swimmer concerned was still attractive, fit and healthy.

The medal was never returned but who has really won in the long term because everyone knows the East German won by cheating and in terms of health and looking good there is no contest? Knowing a life ban was in the offing if drugs were found in your system and knowing you would automatically be tested if you won a medal surely would have served to remind the competitors that sometimes, it is better to come second than win by cheating.

There will always be cheats and perhaps there will always be those who get away with it but one thing is for sure. We should keep testing and those who cheat should be banned for life!

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