With the Olympics coming up, sports like swimming, volleyball, and badminton are enjoying their quadrennial moment in the spotlight. As audience members, we have to admit that we aren’t watching because we suddenly gained an interest in water polo.
We're watching because of the drama.
There are the heartwarming stories of perseverance, the rivalries that have lain dormant since 2012, and the $12 billion spectacle celebrating physical feats of the human body. And then there are the scandals--the corruption in Brazil’s government, bribes of judges and referees. It seems now more than ever, the scandals center around doping.
Doping isn’t a new thing at all. Even in ancient Greece, athletes ingested whatever they thought might give them an edge. Arguably though, the first cases of what we would recognize as doping occurred in a major European cycling competition in 1867. Athletes were found using a wide variety of substances including caffeine, alcohol, ether and nitroglycerine. Since then, the use of performance-enhancing substances has been more or less ubiquitous at major sporting events. An extreme case is the 1988 men’s 100 meter sprint. After testing positive for steroids, the winner was stripped of his gold medal. However, it was discovered within the next few years that all or nearly all of the other finalists had made use of banned substances as well.
Despite how common it is, the use of performance enhancing drugs has always been frowned upon and banned without much argument. Athletes who are caught face severe consequences, such as being stripped of medals and banned from competitions. In fact, for the upcoming Rio Olympics, both the Russian and Kenyan track teams have already been banned after news came of possibly state-sponsored doping (though individual athletes may be able to re-qualify after extensive drug testing).
And that should sound a little disconcerting if you know how intense normal drug testing is. For example, in running, the elite level athletes are required to report where they will be for at least a one hour window every day when not in competitions for the possibility of a random drug test and if they aren’t there at that time, they could get a violation without ever failing a drug test. In competitions, athletes can be randomly selected and will be watched by a minder until (and while) they provide a urine sample. The thing is, even with these rather extreme measures, it’s possible to miss someone who is doping. For example, testosterone is one of the banned substances, but since the amount naturally made in the body can vary a lot from person to person, it is possible to take small amounts as a supplement without being caught. In addition to this, the list of banned substances is simply so large that it is impossible to test for all of them.
In a recent episode of his show, John Oliver talked about the issue of doping in sports. He basically laid out all of the reasons why it is practically inevitable despite the stigma and the hefty punishments. He argues, however, that we should undertake the effort to stop doping, for the sake of preserving the “integrity of sport.”
I’m not convinced doping damages that integrity.
Integrity is generally defined as some combination of fairness, virtue and honesty. The only reason athletes have to be dishonest about doping is because of the potential punishments. But I’d argue that it shouldn't be a punishable offense in the first place. Ever since sports were invented, athletes have been trying to get the edge on one another. It’s the nature of a competition. A virtue that you gain as a competitive athlete is the pure determination to win. And if performance-enhancing drugs are allowed across the board, I fail to see how their use would remove “fairness” from the competition. Choosing which to use, or if to use none at all, wouldn’t be dissimilar to choosing which pair of shoes to wear for the race.
Beyond the argument that the inevitable doping doesn’t actually destroy integrity if it is legal, there is something else. Especially in events such as the Olympics, part of the thrill is seeing the extremes of physical performance of the human body. In many sports, it seems as though we are reaching the physical limit. But the great thing about humans is that we are always coming up with ways to get around those limits.
I say, let’s remove all rules outside those of the games themselves and see just how far we can go beyond what nature intended.
