Who cares about doping in sports

Added by on October 22, 2012

Doping is frowned upon since it ‘unnaturally’ enhances an athlete’s performance.

Is doping foolish? Maybe. Is justifying your existence by sacrificing one person’s career and livelihood using, at best, circumstantial evidence foolish?

Detecting and evading detection of performance enhancing drugs is simply a game of cat and mouse.

Athletes, like everyone else, should be allowed to take whatever they please – regardless of whether it enhances their performance or kills them. We supposedly live in a ‘free society’.

Events like the Tour de France, the Olympics, and other major entertainment – woops – sporting events could have two winners – athletes that use performance enhancing drugs, and athletes that go old-school and do not use performance enhancing drugs. To be fair, maybe add a third category – winners we’re not quite sure about – something like a ‘could have gone natural – we’re not sure’ winner.

Evidence – really?

The USADA evidence includes “direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs”.

Do you really know the USADA? It’s a non-profit, non-governmental organization. Here’s a quote from their About page:

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is the national anti-doping organization for the Olympic movement in the United States. The U.S. Congress recognized USADA as “the official anti-doping agency for Olympic, Pan American and Paralympic sport in the United States.”

Do you see anything about a competition held in France?

What about its non-profit status? The source of funding is often revealing of motivations – where does the USADA get its funding from? Wikipedia summarizes the answer to that question:

“Since mid-September 2006, the [name of agency ironically removed] has removed the ability to directly evaluate, rate or comment on any of their messages”.

Lance Armstrong is the winner

Lance Armstrong actually changed the USADA’s allegations, investigations, and decisions from ‘official’ to ‘irrelevant’ by not wasting his time in responding to the USADA’s ‘charges’.

Doping is and has been a fact of sporting/entertainment for a long time. Humans have limits. Only a few can ‘naturally’ exceed our ‘natural’ limitations, and the rest of us decide whether to ‘dope’ or go old-school.

Either way, the decision is personal one, so it must not be dictated by anyone, even if it puts into question the winner of the sporting/entertainment event.

We were all entertained by the Tour de France and the USADA – now lets get on with our lives.