Introduction
In the world of sports, particularly in athletics, records are made to be broken. However, some athletics world records, particularly in women’s races in the 1980s, like the controversial Marita Koch record, continue to raise eyebrows. Were the astonishing records by Koch and Griffith-Joyner a triumph of human achievement or a result of something more sinister like doping?
This essay explores doping-related issues and the impacts it could have on the popularity and success of contemporary sports. Doping has numerous disadvantages that include unfair competition and risks to the well-being of the athletes. It degrades the genuineness and trust people have in sports, reducing the glory that athletes should enjoy upon winning. Sport enhancement drugs are a genuine threat to the popularity and success of contemporary sports and demand close attention, consideration, and action by the stakeholders involved.
Prevalence of Doping in Sports
In the past four decades, doping in sports has risen astonishingly, making the governing bodies invest billions of dollars in curbing these activities. Doping is not a new phenomenon but an issue closely associated with modern sports, with some sports, such as athletics, weightlifting, and baseball, being more affected. For a better understanding of the significance of the problem, it is imperative to review some of the past doping incidents that have shocked the world.
One of the most infamous cases involved Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics, winning the 100-meter race and breaking the world record with a 9.79-second time (Sharma, 2021). However, a few days after the much-glorified win, Johnson tested positive for anabolic steroid stanozolol, giving his gold medal to the second athlete and his world record scrapped. More recently, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published a report in 2016 that provided substantial evidence that the various Russian governmental bodies facilitated sponsored doping (Harris et al., 2021). The event resulted in Russia being banned from the 2016 Rio and the 2021 Tokyo Olympics competitions and underscored the severity of doping in sports.
In addition to the disheartening athletic events, statistics show that doping is widespread across various sporting events. Sports superstars in events such as football, weightlifting, boxing, and cycling have had a vast share of screen time on TV and gained the media’s attention after it was discovered that they were doping to enhance their abilities. The magnitude of the problem is significant and reveals that doping is not just limited to a few individuals. Indeed, some critics argue that most top athletes across various sports have a doping formula that is hard for WADA and other anti-doping organizations to detect (Petrucci et al., 2021). The huge benefits that winning such sports attracts, including finances and glory, put pressure on gifted sports persons to dope to enhance their abilities, consequently lowering the credibility of sports.
Impacts of Doping on Athletes
Doping is a threat to contemporary sports that, if allowed, would result in adverse outcomes for the athletes involved. First, doping could psychologically impact the athletes involved as they could fail to enjoy their victories knowing that they used unfair means to reach their goals. It has been observed that athletes often undergo a moral dilemma before doping on whether to use the substances or to compete clean and know that their success is a result of hard work (Altman, 2023). Athletes who win aided by drugs are often less confident about themselves and can usually not confidently express the joy of their victories to the rest of the world. The mental dissatisfaction of knowing that you cheated to win not only reduces an individual’s sense of worth but also significantly affects the mental health of the competitors.
Doping is a concern for sporting events as it could significantly affect the athlete’s well-being if allowed. Athletes who overuse some particular disallowed drugs for performance optimization put themselves at risk of some specific diseases and health problems. The use of anabolic steroids and hormone-enhancing drugs has been associated with negative impacts on the physical toll of the athletes involved (Miguel-Ortega et al., 2021).
Some of the most common doping challenges include damage to the liver, hormonal imbalances, psychological imbalances, and cardiovascular problems. If individuals were aware that pursuing athletics could lead to these mental and physical challenges, many might shy away from sports, which would have a major impact on the field. Therefore, prioritizing the well-being of athletes is crucial for stakeholders to attract more people to sports.
Impacts of Doping on Integrity
Doping can hurt sporting events as it could result in reduced integrity of the events, thus making it unsatisfying for the fans to follow. Sports are based on the maxim of fair play, and there must be an equal-level playing field for the sport to be fair. In sports, winning particular events is associated with physical prowess, hard training, the desire for glory, hard work, national heritage, and motivation from the cheering group. The availability of doping and specific drug enhancement tools significantly undermines this notion of mediocracy and erodes all the traits previously associated with winning (Ross, 2021). It would be entirely unethical and unfair for the sports winners to be not based on talent and hard work but on the best tactics that doctors and other staff use to ensure the enhanced performances of a particular athlete.
Doping also reduces the competitiveness of sports activities, as there is a significant difference in performance levels between the top athletes who dope and those who do not. The clarity of the competition also results in increased doubts about sporting achievements, casting huge doubts in any world records, medals, and accolades won by particular athletes. Expectational performances are why sectors pay top dollar to see their superstars perform.
For instance, there is significant doubt about whether a woman could run a mid-47 second, and the fact that today’s women athletes struggle to run under 48 seconds even with advanced training technology makes many fans doubt Marita Koch’s record. The skepticism could significantly hurt sports were it to be discovered that most global champions are dopers. WADA has been doing good work mitigating doping in sporting events, as many athletes, including top superstars like Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba, have been punished for doping (Chu, 2020). These efforts are, however, sometimes compromised by the country’s governmental bodies, highlighting the need for international cooperation to tame doping and increase the integrity of sporting events.
Doping Affects the Popularity of Sports
Doping is a significant threat to contemporary sports as it could result in reduced popularity of sporting events. The fans who finance many sporting activities may be less interested in tapping the potential of sports entertainment to bring satisfaction to life. They may not drive much satisfaction seeing someone win based on the consumed drugs rather than their hard work and talents. This could result in reduced TV viewership maki, ng sports lose their number one spot of being the top revenue source for TV organizations.
Many sponsors who finance various activities may also not wish that their brands be associated with unintegral activities, and they could take their advertisements to more ethical fields and industries (Otto, 2021). Increased doping activities could also result in increased negative coverage by the media. When talks of doping constantly dominate the airtime in the press, fans may be disheartened and develop negative emotions about their favorite sports events, thus significantly impacting the level of viewership.
The impacts of doping on sporting events stem from the ground root level to the international stages. At the local level, having students who participate in particular sports be associated with drug use for optimized performances would result in sports not favoring the school’s management. For example, if a high school principal discovered that some students in a particular event, say basketball, are using drugs to boost their performances, they could stop financing or permitting the team to participate in sporting activities. Such actions done by many teachers may result in the loss of top talent in that particular sporting event, thus making people lose interest. At the international level, countries and cities may be reluctant to host sporting activities for fear that the sporting community will bring a doping and drug use culture to their town (Gupta et al., 2022). The impacts of disillusioned fans, fearful sponsors, negative TV coverage, limitations at the grassroots levels, and the fear of cities and countries to host sporting events pose a considerable threat to the popularity and success of sporting events.
Counterarguments
While the impacts of doping on sports are undeniable, it is imperative to acknowledge the arguments for people who argue that doping would benefit sports. The first argument is that doping would make athletes superstars and inhumane, thus making the sports more enjoyable. While this argument has some merit, it ignores that raw talent based on hard work and daily training could also make the spectators. Sports should never display advancements in technology and pharmacy but should be associated with hard work, perseverance, talent, and not some shortcuts. There is a group, particularly libertarians, that argue doping should be allowed as sports should be based on autonomy (Mossman et al., 2022). This group states that disallowing doping could put some athletes at a disadvantage, and this group of professionals, knowing the risks of doping, should make sound decisions. While autonomy is a fundamental principle of life, it has to be regulated in some areas where one’s decision could affect the other. The case of doping meets this metric as it could unfairly disadvantage the clean competitors or pressure them to compromise their health and well-being.
Some proponents of doping are based on their arguments for its justification on technical advancements and achievements. This group states that advancements in medical science could lead to significant performance enhancement and should not solely be treated as evil (Woessner et al., 2021). This argument is valid, but it is always good for anti-doping bodies to be able to differentiate between doping and technological advancements in enhancement drugs. Technological advancement formulas are usually available to all, do not have negative impacts, and do not bring inequality and deception in the world of sports. Additionally, critics of doping laws say that some previous records are based on athletes who previously dopped, and subjecting today’s sportspeople to such regulations does not lead to fair competition. However, this viewpoint dismisses the fact that the controlling bodies at such a time had a technology that matched the available doping practices; thus, Marina Koch and Florence Griffith-Joyner’s records should be allowed to remain. Upon evaluating these counterarguments, it is clear that doping is a significant threat to contemporary sports and should not be permitted.
Methods for Combating Doping
The previous sections have demonstrated that doping is a significant threat to sports, and measures must be taken to curb this issue. Historically, organizations have been established and severely punished by many sportspeople, showing that the problem is common and severe. WADA seeks to standardize doping policies worldwide related to banned substances, measures to ensure standardized testing and standardized sanctions and punishments for athletes or countries found guilty (Fashina, 2021). Nevertheless, the fight against doping remains an upward battle, with dopers developing new formulas that the doping agency misses. Since doping strategies are constantly changing, WADA and other related organizations should continuously update their techniques to ensure equity and integrity in sports.
Conclusion
The use of drugs to enhance performance, also called doping, poses a significant threat to the contemporary sporting world. This problem is not new and has escalated in the past four decades, making sporting anti-doping organizations like WADA invest billions to tame the problem. The efforts are, however, merited as doping could have significant mental and physical health consequences for the involved parties. This problem could also reduce the revenues generated from sports activities by lowering the integrity of sports and reducing competitiveness. Fans may become less amazed by significant achievements as they would be knowing that the performances are drug-enhanced. Televisions and sponsors may also need to withdraw their sponsorship on realizing that leveraging sporting activities is less profitable. Although there are counteragents for doping, the impacts on health and the need for fair competition render them invalid. Thus, doping should be restricted to ensure that sports remain entertaining and are safeguarded to be feasible in the future.
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