Goodbye Medals: The Role Of Doping In Professional Sports

Goodbye Medals What is doping? It is defined as “the use of a substance or technique to illegally improve athletic performance” (Merriam-Webster). Many athletes are doping today and have been for a very long time. Athletes, such as Mickey Mantle, were doping in the 1950s. This is a serious problem to all sports and no one should be rewarded for it. That is why athletes, who choose to dope, should be forced to forfeit their medals and titles.
By doping, athletes hurt the very sport they play. Darian Nourian wrote, “…why don’t all the professional sport leagues and their governing, anti-doping agencies just go ahead and allow them. Plain and simple: It’s cheating” (Daily Trojan). Cheating hurts not only the one who do it, but also everything

Those doping increase their potential while steadily increasing the bar for those who decide to stay away from doping. This creates an unnatural and unfair competition. For those who truly are competitive, to gain the same level of athletic admiration, they may feel they have no choice but to dope. It causes those not currently doping to try to keep up with those playing beyond their natural ability. This can result in naturally great, or even good, players not making the cut. When someone thinks about sports in general, usually the talent is admired based on pure skill and dedication. Sports should be a means to show off an athlete’s God given talents without any effects of dope. Competing in sports, athletes are constantly faced with a challenge to become stronger and more powerful than their opponent. Once performance enhancing drugs are taken by athletes, the competition level becomes unrealistic for those who wish to remain clean. Even those playing for fun, such as high school players, can be affected. “Professional athletes are often the role models of adolescent and young adult population, who often mimic their behaviors, including the abuse of drugs” (Baron, Martin, & Magd). This creates an unfair level of competition from high school all the way to professionally played sports. Athletes who have caused thousands of children and grown men, or women, to be put in this situation should be ashamed of