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Who’s the dope, now?!
Another Olympics over, and the Paralympics now fully underway …. with another battle to catch the dopers? Why is it that we get so hung up about the use of performance-enhancing drugs, anyway?
There are many reasons to combat them – one is that sport should be just that, sporting. People tune in to see the best of the best battle it out, and we like to feel that there’s a level playing field when they do.
When it comes to stopping athletes gaining an unfair advantage, it makes sense to target doping. There are also health reasons for cracking down, with concerns over the long-term use and abuse of substances, such as anabolic steroids.
But sport has always been rife with inequalities, many of which we don’t even think about. A nation’s Olympic success correlates with two big factors: the size of its population and its GDP. In swimming, for example, bodily features such as hypermobile knees and ankles, together with big feet and hands, can help people like British multi-medalist, Adam Peaty, go faster. A nation is more likely to find someone like him if they have a larger population to choose from.
Meanwhile, richer nations can afford to pay athletes to concentrate on their sport, as well as supply the best diet, equipment and coaches. The result is that the big, high-income countries tend to get more medals. This isn’t cheating but can still be considered unfair.
This inequality feeds back into the doping issue, as people from wealthier countries can more readily afford the latest body-boosting substances, with doping exaggerating the advantage they already have. So, any plans for future games where athletes could openly use drugs to push their bodies to the limit wouldn’t solve anything – aside from the potential health risks, it would simply cement the wealth-related imbalance that already exists.
We would like to think that sporting prowess is all down to talent and determination, but when viewed objectively, the odds are already stacked. We have become fixated on doping because it’s measurable and the fight against it feels scientific. Yet, as we all know, fighting against anything just makes you weaker. We need to be FOR a fairer approach to any game, not show how much we’re against an unfair one.
Sadly, because of this ingrained, societal, skewed outlook, even if we were, somehow miraculously, able to eliminate all the doping, it doesn’t mean that we end up any nearer to ridding the inequality we have in sport.
Here’s to the future, though, with a huge bias towards optimism, regardless of what we may see in the present! Enjoy the Games!!