Cheating and Sportsmanship

Cheating and Sportsmanship HPE essay-BY Elliott Biggs Just like everything in life, sports too are governed by rules, customs and even competition. Sports are a way through which we are able to connect with our past and have good feelings about the future. Sports acts as a way of bonding people despite their age, gender and race differences. Sports today, instead of bonding people and teaching them discipline and teamwork is causing them to cheat. And athletes have a reason to cheat now with all the fame, drugs and endorsements available to gain from.

Cheating in sports is certainly not something new; it has been taking place ever since sports and sporting competitions were first introduced. 2000 years before Mike Tyson bit a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear and due to it faced disqualification in the boxing match, a boxer from Thessaly, Eupolus’s had bribed 3 of his opponents to take dives in the Olympics of 388 BC (Los Angeles Times). Eupolus’s cheating is considered to have been the first cheating act to have been committed in sports. Everyone wants to win and wants an easy way to do it.

The way people cheat in sports has become various and diversified over the years but I will discuss only three. Performance enhancing drugs, performance enhancing equipment and blood doping. First, Performance enhancing drugs. The use of enhancement “substances” for sporting events dates back to the ancient Greeks and ancient Maya. Performance potions where utilized by the Greeks to increase their abilities, and cocoa leaves where thought to be used by the ancient Maya to increase their abilities.

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Today, athletes will go to many lengths to increase athletic ability, including: steroids, HGH, Amphetamines, and even animal or human organs just as the Greeks did in their time. Most young athletes will tell you that the competitive drive to win can be very intense. Besides the satisfaction of personal gain, young athletes often pursue dreams of making it to the Olympics or a place on a professional team. This competitive environment, created by our culture, has led to a more common use of steroids and other performance-enhancing agents in sports.

For a growing number of athletes, winning at all costs includes taking anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Some may appear to achieve physical gains from such drugs, but at what cost? The truth is that long-term effects of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs haven't been painstakingly studied. And short-term benefits are flawed with many potential side-effects and consequences such as loss of medals, eligibility and even death. Billie Holiday said “Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better.

All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way. ” It isn’t worth it. People can die because of these things but they will do anything to win. The use of performance enhancing equipment has many limitations and boundaries. For example, i believe that if you have to use such equipment then it is alright. E. g. Oscar pistorius. Pistorius has below the knee amputations on both legs that have been fitted with Flex-Foot Cheetah carbon fiber transtibial prostheses. He has no choice; if he wants to achieve his goal as an athlete he must use this equipment.

Some say that this puts him at an advantage, but i disagree. If they make them just long enough to give the same amount of spring as the human legs. But, if the competitors are to use equipment unnecessarily, it would be unfair. E. g. a corked bat is a specially modified baseball bat that has been filled with cork or other lighter, less dense substances to make the bat lighter without losing much power. A lighter bat gives a hitter a quicker swing and may improve the hitter's timing. One thing that might make this fair would be if every competitor used the same equipment.

But that would not solve anything, would that not just put them back where they started. This is unfair on other competitors because it gives the athlete an unfair advantage by making them more aerodynamic, faster, leap further or maybe even swim faster by eliminating water resistance. What is the point of athletes using suits anyway, in the end it all still comes down to raw talent anyway. Say swimmer a’s time is 27. 6 secs and swimmer b’s time is 28. 4 secs. They wear the suit which takes of 0. 01 of a second. And swimmer a’s time becomes 27. 59 and swimmer b’s becomes 28. 39.

Swimmer a still wins anyway. Blood doping. The process of blood doping, also called blood boosting or blood packing, involves illicitly increasing the number of red blood cells throughout one’s body. In terms of anatomy red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the muscles. With more oxygen being carried to the muscles during rigorous activity, the longer the muscles will perform without building up lactic acid. Once lactic acid builds up within the bloodstream it restricts the flow of oxygen to working muscles therefore producing fatigue. In essence with more red blood cells more oxygen can be arried to working muscles, therefore increasing endurance and reducing fatigue. For this very reason blood doping has become a favourite practice of some elite endurance athletes due to the fact that it gives them improved aerobic capacity. It allows them to perform rigorous activity, such as cross country skiing, cycling, as well as running at a higher level for a longer period of time. As you can imagine that would give an athlete a significant advantage. A new-Mexico study showed that EPO use can shave up to 69 seconds off of a world-class 10,000 meter time.

In any world class event such as track and field, a 69 second deficit is the difference between being considered the worlds-finest to just another middle runner. This is what inspires athletes to dope. But is it fair? No it is not. I have discussed in this essay three types of cheating in sports and their advantages. I have successfully answered the question, is cheating in sports ethical. Cheating in sports has been around for many hundreds of years and no-one will ever change the fact that people will cheat and find a way to win any way possible.

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