Athletes And Professional Sports Athletes

The competitive drive to win at all cost is fierce among athletes. Winning at all cost often includes using one of many performance enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids. Many athletes use performance enhancing drugs, like steroids, to achieve higher goals and set higher records than other drug-free successful athletes. Although athletes are performing at higher levels when using such drugs, what is the cost? Finally anabolic steroids should remain banned from sports because their use results in many harmful side effects; because their use violates sports regulations, and because their use can cause death.

Steroids have for years been associated with cheating. Though long ago it was common practice for athletes and bodybuilders to use them in order to have an edge in order to become the best, that perception has fallen away along with the careers of many famous athletes. Today the negative connotation associated with using steroids is stronger than ever before. The most recent scandal involved the allegations that world famous cyclist Lance Armstrong, a seven time consecutive winner of the Tour de France, used performance-enhancing drugs. Armstrong later admitted to using them and was promptly banned from participating in cycling events as well as stripped of his awards.

Abstract:  With the increase of competition has also come the need to become bigger and stronger than the opponent.  The use of steroids among athletes has caused the focus of the game to change.  No longer does an athlete want to win by doing their best, but they want to become bigger and have an advantage over the opponent.  Ultimately, all athletes feel that they need to use performance-enhancing drugs to compete at the same level. Despite all of the warnings and information on performance-enhancing drugs, athletes continue to use them and overlook the potential health risks associated with steroids.

Former Notre Dame Football coach, Knute Rockne, once said, “Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure,” (“The Future of Steroids”). The importance of winning in sports and being the greatest has grown immensely. This unquenchable desire to be stronger, faster, and more agile than the opponent, has caused many athletes to stop at nothing to be the best; this pressure has caused athletes to take banned and illegal substances known as performance-enhancing drugs (Performance-enhancing drugs) to achieve maximum strength and speed. The use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs in sports has been obvious to many spectators and sports enthusiasts for quite some time now, and athletes who have been found guilty of taking

Throughout the history of athletics, humans have pursued new and innovative ways to construct better, faster, stronger athletes. Steroid use is one of the most popular choices among these athletes. Steroids, first created in the 1930s, are synthetic hormones that produce specific physiological effects on one's body (Center for Substance Abuse Research). Although the German scientists who discovered steroids did not intend its use for body building or creating better athletes, steroid use has developed into a controversial subject concerning the health of users and other moral issues. Overall, the use of steroids in athletics is physically and morally wrong because it essentially promotes the deterioration of the health of athletes and

Anabolic Steroids are commonly viewed as a miracle drug in order to increase muscle growth and definition, but what most users of the drug don’t know are the life altering effects that prolonged use can cause. When the drug was released in the late 50’s by scientists working for the Soviet Union, they had no idea what the lasting effects were going to be. At first the drug seemed to be almost a miracle, it helped the Soviet weightlifting team beat the American team by a long shot, but then the lifters began to experience certain bodily changes that were actually the onsets of horrendous life changing side effects that could have been prevented with further studies. Since that time, most states in North America and around have banned the distribution and use of the drug completely due to its adverse effects on the body, if caught using such drugs in professional sporting communities, it could land the athlete thousands of dollars’ worth of fines and they can even face up to five years in jail if they are found with the drug in their possession. On top of this, the risks involved can potentially alter the normal way of life for that athlete for the rest of his life, such risks include hormonal changes, cardiovascular problems, behavioral issues, and even problems with the reproductive system.

Famed writer Grantland Rice once wrote, “When the great scorer comes to mark against your name. He'll mark not won or lost but how you played the game” (World of quotes, 1). That buoyant attitude of selflessness and heart has slowly diminished throughout the course of time. Now, George Allen’s booming voice, former coach of the Washington Redskins, runs throughout head of America, “Only winners are truly alive. Winning is living. Every time you win, you’re reborn. When you lose, you die a little” (Harris, 67). It is with this frame of mind that athletes are pushed beyond the edge of reason. Although peer pressure and pressure from coaches are central reasons why one may use steroids, most users begin using in order to improve their self image or excel in sports. Ethics, integrity, and legality aside, some athletes will stop at nothing to attain “that extra edge”.

In the days when steroids were only being used by body builders and professional wrestlers, stories about performance enhancing drugs could only be found on the back pages of the newspapers. When former Oakland Raiders All-Pro Lyle Alzado admitted to steroid use in a 1991 Sports Illustrated article the whispers about what professional athletes were using steroids began to get louder. (Puma, 2005) Finally, in 2002, when Caminiti, a former MVP, came clean, two things were clear; athletes in all sports were using these drugs, and that they worked. The fact that steroid use had permeated our national pastime combined with the media explosion of the internet and 24 hour a day sports talk created a perfect storm which created the biggest sports story of the new millennium so far. However, two other facts remained clear, performance enhancing drugs were old news, and athletes in all sports from all over the world had been using them for years.

Athletes use substances before or during their performance to increase their ability (Marzilli 12-13). Student athletes will use steroids to increase their strength for a better outcome in their competition. Testosterone is a common hormone in the body that most athletes abuse (Marzilli 12). Testosterone is produced naturally in the body of any animal (“Steroids in Sports”). It creates alertness and aggressiveness to improve performance (“Steroids in Sports”). That is why early athletes used to take some form of medication to boost the production of testosterone in their body. Both males and females will consume steroids to increase testosterone in their body. Due to all the medical advantages that steroids have to an individual, athletes use them to achieve and to sharpen their performance. Apart from fatigue and letting athletes train for hours, steroids also act as a compound to lactic acid which causes muscle pain during physical struggles (“Steroids in Sports”). Steroids also contain the hormones that can increase quickly to recover from injuries (“Steroids in Sports”). Since steroids can increase endurance levels several times, athletes find it simple to run faster and improve their performance in sports. According to Gary Becker, performance enhancers, like steroids and other types of doping, have a negative effect on long-term health ( “Top 10 Pros and Cons”). Athletes will hurt themselves in the long run. Competitors dope and consume steroids to achieve the short term rewards in their teenage years of competitions (Becker). It is not worth achieving something that is temporary than living with a long-term health condition. Student athletes are not educated enough of the effects that drugs have on a

Anabolic-androgenic steroids are a huge problem amongst today’s athletes. The use of these drugs has been around for many years in sports. Understanding anabolic-androgenic steroids and why people take them is needed in the process of trying to eliminate them from professional sports. Also, players knowing and understanding how the negatives of anabolic-androgenic steroid use outweigh the positives will hopefully help new players who are looking for an edge on the competition to refrain from the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids. Along with the harmful side effects players can experience from anabolic-androgenic steroid abuse, it also hurts the integrity of professional sports as a whole. Allowing players access to intervention programs and treatment can help to curb the widespread use of AAS. My goal in this paper is to show what anabolic-androgenic steroids are, why they impact sports in a negative way, and why they give professional athletes an unfair advantage and shouldn’t be a factor in sports.

We all want to be the best. We want to be bigger, faster, and stronger. We want to excel at everything we attempt. It’s not easy, it takes a lot of work, drive, and motivation to become the best at what you do. We live in a world where the media highlights the most successful people in the world, many of these people being athletes. However, only a few athletes have the true desire to put in the work to achieve these traits. So, they turn to steroids. Steroids consumption has erupted since the late 1900’s and into the 2000’s. Today, the consumption of steroids with athletes is rising quicker than it ever has. Some of the most well know players in baseball were caught

Over the course of history, there have been a plethora of performance-enhancing substances and other types of drugs that have swept their way through the sports world. Many athletes have been caught in the act of using these kinds of drugs, and others have been ‘lucky’ enough to get off with little to no punishment. Steroids have taken over sports by storm, specifically baseball, where they seem to be used the most.

Over the years, teenagers, and adults see their favorite athletes, and body builders and decide that they want their body to look like their role model’s. What many athletes and body builders use to fulfill that look is steroids. Steroids are a quick and easy way that makes the body look masculine with small work put in at the gym. What many people don’t know is that non-medical steroids causes emotional and physical harm to the human body. Anabolic steroids help in promoting the growth of muscle for people who need them. People who abuse the use of steroids cause more harm to their body than good. Steroids in sports, the who, what, why, where’s, and the physical and mental harm steroids does to our body is why it’s illegal.

Anabolic steroids are synthetic steroid hormones made to resemble testosterone. These drugs are not the only performance enhancing drugs (PED’s) out there. Some are not even steroids, such as: creatine, tamoxifen, propranolol, cox-2, albuterol, ephedrine, and erythpoietin. These performance enhancing drugs may be boosting the skill level in an athlete’s career, but it is doing no good to the health of the athlete himself. Multiple sports are having reports of athletes using PED’s including baseball, being one of the top sports for steroid usage, cycling, and mixed martial arts. The use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs has forever changed the face of professional sports, and its athletes, making it a world fueled by drug contacts instead of skill and talent. (10 performance enhancing drugs that are not steroids by William Harris)

Day by day professional athletes are being praised for their ability and accomplishments in their respective sports. The professional athletes that are succeeding the most are generally using performance enhancing drugs, other known as anabolic steroids (Mayo Clinic). Anabolic steroids are drugs which imitate the effect of the male sex hormone, Testosterone. The cells producing protein increase and then turn into cellular tissue build up in the muscles. The professional athletes that are taking advantage of the performance enhancing drugs, or steroids, should be prohibited from their particular sports, if not terminated from the