Does Anti-Doping Create an Even Playing Field?
You wouldn’t cheat in your school tests, or your music exams, so why would you cheat in sport?
Doping in sport with athletes taking banned substances to improve their performance remains a problem. There are many banned supplements such as stimulants and hormones to help your body to recover quicker, build muscle and increase energy allowing training and performance at a higher standard.
Doping tests were first introduced in 1966 to cycling and football world championships and subsequently introduced to the 1968 Grenoble winter Olympics and Mexico summer Olympics. From 1970 onwards most international federations have taken steps to introduce drug-testing in an attempt to create an even playing field. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was established in 1999 with 3 criteria for banning a particular substance: “performance enhancement, health risk and being perceived against the spirit of sport.”
Athletes give up huge amounts of time, sacrifice career and social life to spend countless hours in the gym and on the track. Such sacrifices are willingly made to become the best athlete they can be and to compete at the highest level. But sports fall into disrepute when other athletes seek an unfair advantage by taking performance enhancing drugs in the worst cases meaning drugs cheats taking medals over hard working athletes.
WADA aims to combat this by banning an athlete caught knowingly using a proscribed substance from competing within the sport or any other sport that follows WADA rules for 4 years. It is the athlete’s responsibility to check whether medicines or supplements are allowed and ignorance is not a defence as WADA can be asked and medicines or proteins can be checked by visiting www.globaldro.com For example the British skier Alain Baxter legally used a common nasal inhaler but the over-the-counter version he bought when in the USA contained methamphetamine, a banned substance. Baxter was found not guilty of a deliberate offence but was still stripped of his medal. WADA also introduced a ‘whereabouts’ rule where an athlete must say where they will be for 1 hour every day to allow testing without advance warning.
Despite advances in drugs-testing and 35 WADA credited laboratories making 277,928 analyses, in 2009 there were 5,610 results that showed “adverse’ or a-typical results”. In addition there are masking hormones which make it increasingly hard for laboratories to detect prohibited substances.
Drug use can affect the health of the athlete, the reputation of their sponsors and impacts on their fans who lose a role model. It may effect participation in that sport and creates hostility between athletes and even countries where drug use can be state-sponsored. However, with the rewards of sporting success increasing, the temptation to cheat remains. For example cyclist Lance Armstrong was rightly stripped of his 7 Tour De France titles and received a lifetime ban from WADA as a ‘serial cheat’ who led “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”. Sprinter Tyson Gay tested positive for a banned substance and was stripped of his Olympic silver medal and suspended until June 2014.
The intention of anti-doping is certainly to create a level playing field. However, while some athletes and coaches believe the potential rewards (with highly lucrative sponsorships and prize money) outweigh the risk of being caught it is inevitable that cheating will continue. There will be incentives for labs to create drugs that are harder to identify and the continuation of an “arms race” in drugs in sport. It is vital, therefore, that alongside more effective testing sports bodies further tilt that risk/reward balance by increasing punishments for those who are caught.
For more information on drug testing and doping in sport, click on this link https://ukad.org.uk/education/athletes/
BBC Sport. (2018). Doping in sport: What is it and how is it being tackled?. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/33997246 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2018].
Devi, S. (2016). Overhaul of global anti-doping system needed. The Lancet, 387(10034), pp.2188-2189.
The Conversation. (2018). How many Olympic athletes are taking drugs?. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/how-many-olympic-athletes-are-taking-drugs-8527 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2018].
BBC Sport. (2018). Lance Armstrong: Usada report labels him 'a serial cheat'. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/19903716 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2018].
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