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There have been so many high profile gold-medal winning athletes exposed as illegal drug users now
that I feel the spectacle of athletics competition has been utterly devalued. When we watch the
Olympics this summer, speculating about which athlete is a junkie will provide just as much
entertainment value as watching the events themselves.
New performance-enhancing substances are constantly being synthesized in laboratories. The
regulatory authorities cannot keep up. Athletes use some of the newly innovated drugs, get away with
it for a few years and then are exposed further down the line. People like Florence Griffiths-Joyner
and Marion Jones were strongly suspected at the peak of their fame of being drug abusers, yet they
continued to reap the glory and the cash that came with it for a long time.
It's better, in my opinion, that athletics competition should simply be brought to an end. It has
become so pervasively corrupt that is no longer salvageable. The only real alternative is to
legalise the use of performance-enhancing substances. At least that way we would know that everyone
is competing on even terms. Many of these substances have unfortunate side-effects on health,
though, so it's not a very good example to set for young people. |
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25 Mar 2008 14:48
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