why sports persons take drugs
Answers
It’s become a common sight in sports these days - meteoric rise of an athlete followed by accusations of drug abuse and the subsequent suspension and ban of the superstar athlete. Fans wonder why an athlete who earns millions of dollars would put their incredibly rewarding career on the line for drug use?
Competition in the sports industry is now more than ever, and athletes are always under constant pressure to excel. Use of performance enhancing drugs manifolds the performance level of an athlete and goes a long way in winning a gold medal. It’s not just a gold medal, though, it’s also the fame and money that comes along with it. As Jose Canseco said, “I don’t recommend steroids for everyone…but for certain individuals, I truly believe, because I’ve experimented with it for so many years, that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. It can make a super athlete incredible.”
Most athletes are at the peak for a short span of time, and they try to make the most of it, but it comes with certain risks. Firstly, athletes who take these illegal drugs can get suspended for a long time, and some are also handed lifetime bans. Secondly, it puts the athletes’ health in grave danger and has many long-term implications. Training and hard work are the only fair way for a sportsman to win, but the use of drugs boost their effort and gives them shortcuts.
Athletes have used drugs for a variety of reasons - mass building and strength of muscles, increasing delivery of oxygen to exercising tissues, to mask pain, stimulate the body; relax, reduce weight and even to hide the use of other illegal drugs. The Olympic Committee has banned a lot of these substances, but some drugs, like cortisone and local anesthetics are allowed to a specified extent.
Identifying cases of doping is often a hard task, and is subject to discretion by most of the federations around the world, but MPCC (Mouvement Pour Un Cyclisme Credible) have managed to release a report “based on proven cases according to official communications federations and anti-doping agencies.” Athletics has the most doping cases with 62, weightlifting with 55, baseball with 30, and cycling with 21.
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