Drugs in Sport: Maintaining our Integrity

Drugs in sport. This is an issue that everyone in the Nut Up or Shut Up team feels strongly about. I know I certainly do. It is an issue that I have grown up to know a lot about because of my father. He is an avid cyclist, and ever since he took up riding, he has watched the Tour de France. Now, when Lance Armstrong began to really get a stranglehold on the event, Dad looked up to this guy. He thought Armstrong was the definition of an elite athlete. He believed Lance when he said he did not take drugs to win his 7 Tour de France titles. He was shattered when Armstrong was found guilty.

 

This kind of story, is unfortunately, becoming more and more prominent in today’s world of experimental sport scientists. It saddens me because I have grown up to believe that to be the best, one must also have outstanding integrity and passion. I don’t doubt the likes of Lance Armstrong or Alberto Contador had the passion for the sport and the willingness to win at all costs, but the ‘at all costs’ side of things began to rule their path in the sport over simply being the best based on pure merit.

The most recent international sporting drug scandal would have to be Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay. These men competed at an OLYMPIC level in the athletics division. They won the hearts of millions and made millions more dream to become like them. They had kids from all over the world practicing their 100m sprint, hoping, dreaming, to one day line up on the starting blocks, wait for the gun and win an Olympic gold medal. But as is becoming increasingly common in the sporting world, these two men turned to drugs to try and win. In doing that, they have exposed themselves as cheats and fakes to their fans worldwide. Like Armstrong did to my Dad, these two men have crushed the trust that so many held in them.

It seems that drugs in sport seem to follow those sports that garner a lot of money to one individual. Cyclists who race professionally receive huge paychecks at the end of each season. Sprinters and longer distance runners a like rack up massive sums from sponsorship deals. In Australia, we have had an increasing problem of both performance enhancing drugs and illicit drugs in our main sporting codes of AFL, rugby and soccer. In AFL, there are 19 year old boys who are just out of school, earning upwards of $80,000 a year. That is just asking for trouble with drugs and alcohol. Another issue in AFL (Australian Rules Football) is that one of the most respected clubs in the AFL, Essendon Football Club, has been under the microscope because they were administered peptides by their sports doctor, including their coach, and incredibly well-respected man and player (back in his day), James Hird. What kind of message does this send to the younger generation aspiring to become a football great?

 

For one to turn to drugs to enhance their physical performance, you have to have truly lost your path towards your goal. You have lost all integrity. You have lost all the respect that people hold towards you. Most obviously, you have lost the trust of those who believed in you. How pure can victory really be when one KNOWS in their heart that this victory was not deserved by them. To me, that is not winning. Winning for me is to cross the line, knowing that you have trained and prepared as much as you possibly can and that you executed that race to the best of your ability. Most of all, winning is knowing that those around you are just like you. They have got to where they are based on merit. Drugs ruins the integrity of sport, and I don’t know about you, but the integrity on sport is one of the main reasons I play it.