Abusing their bodies.
The Use and Abuse of Drugs in the Olympic Games
According to a definition from World Book Dictionary, a drug is a substance (other than food), that when taken into the body, produces a change in it. If this change helps the body, the drug is referred to as a medicine. If the change harms the body, the drug is referred to as a poison. The use of drugs to enhance sporting performance, or "doping" has occurred throughout history and has been responsible for some improved sporting performances. However, "doping" is ethically unacceptable and has been responsible for the ill health and even death, of some athletes.
Athletes have used performance-enhancing drugs for decades. In 1968 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned the use of performance-enhancing substances to promote fair play in competition. At that time the banned substances were primarily anabolic steroids and amphetamines.
Other athletic associations and sport governing bodies soon followed suit by adopting similar bans, including the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which adopted a drug-testing program to promote fair and equitable competition and to safeguard the health and safety of student-athletes. Since then the specified number of banned substances has risen dramatically as athletes are driven to finding new ways to obtain a competitive edge and/or to avoid detection.
In the earlier Olympic Games, the drugs of choice included strychnine, heroin, cocaine, and morphine. The first "effective" performance-enhancing drugs, the amphetamines, were widely used by soldiers during the Second World War and crossed over into sports in the early 1950s.
These drugs minimize the sensation of fatigue during exercise, which is the body's way of protecting itself from over-exertion. Cyclists have died of heat stroke while using amphetamines. To avoid detection, athletes simply substitute a clean urine sample for a doped specimen.
The prototype for another group of potent performance-enhancing drugs, anabolic steroids, was synthesized in 1936 and appeared in sport sometime after the 1948 Olympic Games. By increasing muscle size, the anabolic steroids increase strength, power, and sprinting speed; they also alter mood and speed the rate of recovery after exertion.
For maximum effect, steroids are used in combination with hormones that have similar activity, including insulin and growth factor. There are multiple side effects, including death. Designer steroids have been developed that elude detection by all the current testing protocols.
Another type of performance-enhancing drug is erythropoietin, the hormone that regulates the red-cell mass in the human body. By increasing red cell mass and therefore the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, more oxygen is delivered to exercising muscles. Benefits of even a short course of the substance can last for weeks, but it can be detected in urine only for a few days after the most recent injection.
Twenty-six young cyclists have died after using erythropoietin since it was introduced into the world of competitive cycling in the late 1980s. Athletes also use narcotic analgesics, allowing them to train even if they are injured and in pain. Beta-blockers are also used to stop an athlete from trembling, reduce their blood pressure, slow their heart rate and have a calming effect.
Diuretics can also be used to increase the amount of urine that athletes pass from their bodies. This is useful for athletes in sports with weight divisions, who have difficulty keeping their weight down to qualify. There are many drug scandals surrounding the Olympic Games. Carl Lewis, five-time Olympic medalist tested positive for banned stimulants in the months leading up to the 1988 Seoul Games. Canadian, Ben Johnson, who beat Carl Lewis in the 100 meter sprint at the Seoul Olympic Games by completing the sprint in a world record-breaking 9.79 seconds, also tested positive for the anabolic steroid, stanozolol.
China won four swimming gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and then took 12 of 16 women's titles at the 1994 world championships. The sudden success of the team fuelled suspicion of drug use, and by the next big competition, those hunches proved true . Eleven athletes tested positive for dihydrotestosterone at the 1994 Asian Games. The big bust decimated the swim squad for the 1996 Olympics (they won just one gold).
The 2004 Summer Olympics oversaw at least 20 offenses, the most for any Olympic Games. Greek baseball players Andrew James Brack and Derek Nicholson tested positive for banned substances; Brack for stanozolol, Nicholson for diuretics during another pre-Olympic drug test. Although they are currently Greek citizens, they are both of Greek-American descent, and were two members of a very large contingent of Greek-Americans recruited by Greece to form part of the Greek baseball team.
Another scandal of the 2004 games was from Russian female weightlifter Albina Khomich. A favorite in the Women's 75+kg weightlifting event, she tested positive for the banned steroid ethandrostenalone during an IWF pre-competition test. She was disqualified and banned from competing in the 2004 Olympic Games.
Uzbekistan's Olga Shchukina was disqualified after having finished 19th (last place) in her qualifying group in the women's shot put. Shchukina tested positive in an out-of-competition screening August 14, 2004 for the steroid clenbuterol. According to news reports, Shchukina claimed she ingested the substance inadvertently in a cough syrup. Since the IOC has a "strict liability" rule, which holds athletes responsible for any banned substance found in their system, she was nevertheless found guilty of a doping offense.
The oath taken by athletes at the beginning of each Olympic Games is as follows, "In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams."
Drug use by competitors in the Olympic Games, as in any sport, should unquestionably be illegal. It is medically unacceptable because of the potential side effects and it is ethically unacceptable because it contravenes the spirit of sport and the concept of fair play. Specifically it is not fair for one individual to gain and advantage over another by means which are secretive and dangerous and give advantage to the extent that other competitors would have to accept the same unreasonable risks in order to be competitive.
Using drugs for performance enhancement sends the wrong message, that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character.
References
CBS Sports: The Inside Dope (2005) Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/ 7 October 2005.
On This Day: 1988 From Victory to Scandal (2005) Retrieved from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/september /24/newsid_3114000/3114220.stm
Slam Olympics Scandal Archive (2005) Retrieved from http://www.canoe.ca/SlamOlympicScandalArchive/home.h tml 8 October 2005.
Steinert, David. The History of World War II Medicine (2002) Retrieved from http://home.att.net/~steinert/wwii.htm 6 October 2005.
The Olympic Movement: Olympic Issue; Drugs. Retrieved from
http://www.olympics.org.uk/olympicmovement/olympicis suesdrugs.asp 8 October 2005.