26 Deadly sins D is for Doping

Why stick with seven deadly sins when there are so many things we could get up to?  Life is just too busy to stick with such a small number.  There are so many more things that you can do these days which are sinful.  Some are just naughty and some are downright evil.  They are all modern takes on ancient phenomena.  Over the coming month as part of the A-Z blogging challenge, I am going to bring the list up to date with my suggested 26 modern deadly sins.

D is for doping.  Sport has always been filled with cheats.  There are always people who break the rules to try and win and with the amount of money in sport these days the pressure is greater than ever.  The opportunity is unprecedented as well.  No longer are you restricted to Dick Dastardly type tricks to upset your opponents you can now use a bewildering array of chemical stimulants to get your way.

The use of banned drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical, and prohibited, by most international sports organizations.  Cheating is unethical though clearly very tempting.  Rob Sloan from Tyne and Wear cheated in the Keilder Marathon by getting the bus for six of the twenty six miles.  This was more dope than doping.  It was an amateur event.

Professional cycling has always been troubled with doping.  Lance Armstrong was stripped of all his Tour de France ‘wins’ after his highly successful doping regimen was uncovered.  ‘Nobody wins when an athlete decides to cheat with dangerous performance enhancing drugs, but clean athletes at every level expect those of us here on their behalf, to pursue the truth to ensure the win-at-all-cost culture does not permanently overtake fair, honest competition’ said USADA CEO, Travis T. Tygart.

Perhaps sport needs to be split into two: a clean version with no drugs and an anything goes affair.

Thou shalt not enhance your performance through doping.