Within the past three decades the world of sports has developed into multi-billion dollar business, with franchises and individual athlete’s signing sponsorship deals and TV rights contracts worth millions. This has put immense pressure onto the shoulders of athlete’s, sports clubs and national sporting federations to succeed, win major titles and gold medals. This increase in pressure has caused coaches, and athlete’s to make the decision to take performance enhancing drugs to attempt to increase their level of performance and increase their chance of success. We have read and heard about many doping scandals on the news within recent years to do with high level performers being caught taking illegal ergogenic aids such as: Lance Armstrong,
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Armstrong’s argument for why he had doped was that everyone else was cheating and doping therefore he had to do the same in order to win, in fact he is referred to as ‘ the best of the cheats.’ Author Chris Cooper gives a perfect example of Armstrong’s argument when he mentions ‘the 1988 Men’s Olympic one hundred meter final where it was proven that six out of the eight finalists had tested positively for illegal drugs, such as anabolic steroids and ephedrine and pseudo ephedrine.’ This race earned itself the name ‘ the most corrupt race ever.’ (Cooper) Another example which indicates that one must dope in order to be successful is within Cycling where in fact between ‘1998 and 2005 the years in which Armstrong won his seven consecutive La tour de France’s each year six of the top seven riders in the general classification event had all tested or would be proved to have taken illegal PED’s’, this reinforces the idea that PED’s should be legalized because it would not allow rule-breakers the advantage that they gain from doping
Armstrong’s argument for why he had doped was that everyone else was cheating and doping therefore he had to do the same in order to win, in fact he is referred to as ‘ the best of the cheats.’ Author Chris Cooper gives a perfect example of Armstrong’s argument when he mentions ‘the 1988 Men’s Olympic one hundred meter final where it was proven that six out of the eight finalists had tested positively for illegal drugs, such as anabolic steroids and ephedrine and pseudo ephedrine.’ This race earned itself the name ‘ the most corrupt race ever.’ (Cooper) Another example which indicates that one must dope in order to be successful is within Cycling where in fact between ‘1998 and 2005 the years in which Armstrong won his seven consecutive La tour de France’s each year six of the top seven riders in the general classification event had all tested or would be proved to have taken illegal PED’s’, this reinforces the idea that PED’s should be legalized because it would not allow rule-breakers the advantage that they gain from doping