How Drug Cheats Stole My Dreams

When I was a child I loved athletics, right up until my mid teenage years an obsession ran through my veinslike a gushing, babbling brook. I loved all things athletic and in particular I loved Carl Lewis.

Lewis was the closest thing I've ever had to a true hero, his favourite events were also mine. The 100 and 200 metres, the long jump and the relay, these were events that I wanted to excel in, all because of him.

Even though I am from the UK I admired the American athletes in particular, mostly because they were the best sprinters and I loved sprinting and loathed long distance running.

I had my British and European heroes too, the legendary English decathlete Daley Thompson, the Welsh 110 metre hurdler Colin Jackson, and the multiple world record-breaking Russian pole vaulter Sergei Bubka to name but three.

However it was the American sprinters that really caught my imagination and who I wanted to emulate, that is until I found out that most of them were on drugs and that just ended it all for me.

The Drug Olympics

Throughout the years I have heard various variations of the following statement:

They should just allow them to all take drugs and then we can truly see who the best of the best is.

On the face of it this doesn't seem like a bad suggestion, it is essentially saying; if you can't beat them join them.

But this suggestion has never sat well with me, and it wasn't until just a few moments ago when I was replying to an amazing comment left on my post by @rodneysreviews that I suddenly fully and completely realised why.

My objections to that argument before had been that, the reason they shouldn't just let everyone juice up is because that would be unfair to the athletes who don't want to take drugs for the many good reasons that exist.

For a start a lot of people who have abused (or have been suspected of abusing) performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) have suffered ill effects and in some cases died young.

For me one of the most stark cases of that is (in my opinion) Florence Griffith Joyner (AKA Flo-Jo), whom myself (and many others) believe took the male growth hormone HGH which was undetectable at the time of her competing.

I said it at the time, and I'll say it again; her 100 metre world record of 10.49 seconds will either never be beaten or will take at least 50-100 years for another woman to run that fast.

If you look at the times women are running today, some 20 years after Griffith Joyner competed, they are still only running times comparable with the other athletes of her time. And even a 'juiced up' Marion Jones could still only get to within three tenths of a second to Flo-Jo's 21.34 200m record.

Disclaimer: Despite many allegations by people both inside and outside of athletics, it was never proved that Griffith Joyner (Flo-Jo) took PEDs. Nor was it proven that her subsequent sudden death at the age of 38 was due to any illegal drug taking. All statements regarding this athlete are solely the opinion of the author.

A Paradise Lost

I think I have always been attracted to stories of strife and heroes and heroines overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. I think that's why I was so drawn to athletics, because in each one of those stories is a tale of personal struggle...

The above paragraph formed part of my answer to @rodneysreviews on a completely unrelated post and it triggered this current epiphany.

That's it in a nutshell, I love stories of personal triumph; I don't think I'm unique in that sense, many people do.

For me athletics is the ultimate embodiment of one person overcoming insurmountable odds in order to achieve their goals.

I don't mind admitting to you I have cried real tears while watching moments of sporting glory, I literally can't think about Kelly Holmes's 2004 double gold-medal winning exploits without welling up.

Or the memory of Daley Thompson ignoring all the pain and dragging himself over the line in the final event of the final Olympic decathlon of his career to cap a 10 year unbeaten run.

These moments resonated with me because they were where I wanted to be. I saw in these men and women a kind of courage that I wanted to have, to lay it all on the line, to risk failure to get that one moment.

All of this is ruined and degraded if that person has cheated in any way. It makes a mockery of that struggle and I took it, and still do take it as a personal affront, you may as well come round my house and spit in my face and you wouldn't offend me more than taking PEDs in order to beat an honest athlete.

If I had my way, anyone caught doing steroids would have a lifetime ban with no chance of reprieve. Why should anyone who knowingly and systematically cheats be allowed to compete on such a pure and beautiful level?

Where To Now?

As I got older I fell out of love with sprinting as I saw so many get caught and banned (for a measly two years), from Ben Johnson to Marianne Jones they all contributed to a little piece of me dying inside.

I got into the long distance events which seemed to be mostly untainted with the scourge of drugs, however they don't give me the kind of buzz as watching events in that I was actually good at.

I moved from watching boxing to MMA, however the amount of people who get caught for steroid abuse in that sport is rapidly turning me off it. I find it particularly disgusting that a fighter takes PEDs, because of the fact that you could seriously injure or kill somebody who isn't fighting enhanced.

So nowadays I'm less into sport, in some ways that's a good thing because I no longer seek some kind of oblique validation through watching other people achieve things.

In other ways it is a bit sad because I miss being able to be part of somebody else's personal pain and triumph story.

All in all I still want my daughter to grow up being into sport, as in my mind it teaches us something about life that somehow can't be learned elsewhere.

Plus for the fact that not watching or being involved in sport anymore will mean that the cheaters have won; and whilst the maxim cheaters never prosper is clearly false, sometimes they prosper a great deal. In this scenario, I want to make sure that I'm not contributing to that prosperity.

WHAT ABOUT YOU; DO YOU LIKE SPORTS? DOES IT MATTER TO YOU WHEN A SPORTSPERSON CHEATS WITH DRUGS TO GAIN AN ADVANTAGE OVER FELLOW COMPETITORS? OR PERHAPS YOU THINK IT IS INEVITABLE AND THEY SHOULD JUST BE ALLOWED TO GET ONE WITH IT?

WHAT EVER YOUR THOUGHTS AND VIEWS ARE, THEN AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!

Title image: By rawpixel on Unsplash

Crptogee