Financial and material rewards are major influences on athletes and sporting performance. Sport, which was once an activity to fill in leisure time, has now become a way to earn a living for some of our elite athletes. In recent times people have commented that money-making principles have begun to replace athletes' moral principles.
Enormous salaries, product endorsements and potential careers outside of the sporting field are some of. the rewards available to the successful athlete. Rewards are also available to athletes at lower levels of competition and to those in amateur sport. Even at junior levels, inducements such as scholarships are a significant incentive, and can increase the pressure to achieve.
The banning of the use of drugs in sport is generally justified by the dual and interrelated arguments that it is medically unacceptable because of the potential side effects and it is ethically unacceptable because it contravenes the spirit of sport and the concept of fair play.
Specifically, it is not fair for one individual to gain an advantage over another by means which are secretive and dangerous and give advantage to the extent that other competitors would have to accept the same unreasonable risk in order to be competitive.
There would be two possible soulution for this problem. These two are exacly the opposite of each other.
The other option is to allow drugs into sport.
There are a lot of pros and cons for each solution, and it is really hard to decide which one would be the best for everybody, not just for the athletes but the audience and everybody who is related somehow to the sporting community.
I will show the consequences that would happen if we could achieve the drug free sport.
If we could achieve these goals, athletes from all around the world would compete with equal chance to win.
But the results in all sports would decrease immediatly, for example the world champion in the 100 m dash would run 10,0- 10,2. Nobody would invest money in sport anymore.It would be a purely money free sport, with no manufacturer endorsements, no TV commentary jobs and no prize money. The proffesional sport would die. This just is not going to happen.
We could reach this by increasing the number of testing. Testing should become more rigorous, and it is becoming obvious that the tightening of doping policies to prevent legal challenges is just as important as the development of new testing and analytical procedures.
Drug use in sports continues to change. New forms of undetectable dopings have appeared. The testing should be adjustable and uptated to the new forms of doping.
The other solution would be to let athletes use drugs. This would be equal for all athletes too, but drug using is unacceptable for many athletes in the world. There are a lot of arguments though, that support this idea.
The very nature of sport is about striving to gain the edge over the opponent, using drugs is no different from having a better bike, a better shoe, or a better altitude training regime.
There is never a level playing field anyway, some will always have advantages over others whether it be through; genetics, money, training environment, sports science back up etc. drugs are just another variable.
Sport is by nature dangerous, in the bid to be; swifter, higher, stronger athletes are having to take more and more risks, some potentially more dangerous than drugs.
The drugs in sport rules are iniquitous, why allow creatine, the birth control pill, local anaesthetics etc. and ban anabolic steroids which when taken in controlled circumstances may not be any more dangerous than some permitted drugs.
In today's professional environment, drugs restrictions are an anachronism, as both the sponsors and the public simply want the most competitive athletes in front of them irrespective of how they reach that point.
Many athletes use drugs but are ignorant of safety issues and it would be better to accept that athletes will
