Tour de France

Using drugs to increase performance is without doubt cheating when it comes to sports, but in professional sports money will always be a reason for athletes to use it. For a professional athlete it can be the difference between being the best and being part of the results list. With all the money involved in sports today there is a calculated risk by using it that many people are willing to take.

Over the years, this has been forgotten as people focus only on winning. From 1968 on, hundreds of Olympic athletes have been caught doping. PED’s are considered cheating in today’s sports. Although every athlete is determined to win, PED’s have no place in sports. When athletes resort to using these drugs, the endanger their health and their safety. An example of this is the death of Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen who died in the Olympics from the use of amphetamines which caused him to lose consciousness and fall from his bicycle to his death. Another consequence of PED use is setting a bad example and being a bad role model. In 2007 many fans were let down when Barry Bonds tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. Many fans, both young and old, looked up to Barry and were disappointed with his choices. With so many baseball players using performance-enhancing drugs today, the integrity of the game has been lost. The players who use PED’s negatively affect the players who play the game without cheating. One of the worst consequences of all for using PED’s is being suspended or banned. Since the 1960’s, the technology for PED testing has improved and more athletes have been caught, suspended or

Performance-enhancing drugs (PED 's) have been an issue for many decades now for the medical and sports field. Olympic and professional athletes have been using them to gain an upper hand on the competition, but some may ask if it 's really worth it? Studies show that performance-enhancing drugs have been proven to negatively affect the health of athletes who take them. Simply put, performance-enhancing drugs could either improve athletic performance or can be extremely dangerous, in certain situations, deadly. There have been strict rules and drug testing in the professional sporting organizations, as well as in world competitions. For example, in the summer of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, in two of the

Performance Enhancing Drugs(PEDs) shouldn’t be used in sports, because of its adverse health consequences. According to an article called Performance-Enhancing Drugs Can Have Severe Long-Term Impact on Health: Expert, in the long term, PEDs can cause impotence, worsening acne, balding and “steroid rage.” This conveys that if athletes use PEDs there will be serious effects and severe consequence to their health. Also, the drugs aren't subject to government safety standards and could be impure or mislabeled.(Article: Performance-enhancing drugs: Know the risks?) Therefore, the illegal drugs and supplements that the athlete consume are dangerous, damaging and potentially deadly. The drug could be made out of something that gives you a disease or even kills you because it doesn’t meet the government safety

Athletes use performance enhancing drugs to boost their game. The professionals who use these drugs are ruining the integrity of the game. Many people don’t understand why professional athletes would go to such extreme measures to be better when they have already proven themselves. Athletes are just taking away from their natural ability by using these dangerous drugs. The risk of using performance enhancing drugs is a lot greater than the reward, because an athlete’s reputation could be tarnished and their career ruined. Money is one of the major reasons why players use them; if they perform at levels higher than what their natural abilities could do they will be offered a large sum of money.

A number of prominent athletes have recently experienced a 'fall from grace,' because of the revelation that they used performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is Lance Armstrong. In an advertisement for Nike that his former sponsor now no doubt regrets, Armstrong is shown asking the viewer "what am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day." Professional cycling is often cited as one of the sports in which doping is most endemic to its subculture, however a number of professional sports have been embroiled in drug scandals. Because of the many revelations about the number of baseball players who used steroids to get their record-breaking statistics, the 1990s are often called the 'steroid' era of baseball. The Olympic track and field star Marian Jones was stripped of her medals, after finally admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (Lardon 2008). "Despite the health risks, and despite the regulating bodies' attempts to eliminate drugs from sport, the use of illegal substances is widely known to be rife. It hardly raises an eyebrow now when some famous athlete fails a dope test" (Savulescu, Foddy, & Clayton 2004).

For many years sports have played huge roles in human’s everyday lives. From entertainment, political, financial and to actually competing in them. The task for the sportsmen or women, especially in the top rank, is to beat the other competitors and get a good result from it. Here there is a high amount of pressure on many athletes coming from the media, coaches, themselves etc. They have the wanting to do well and achieve their goals and aims so much that some of the athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs. Obviously training for competition is the main thing to do but using drugs is another helper to succeeding. So, to their way of thinking, doping does not seem like cheating it just seems like

“Commentators claim that performance-enhancing drugs are not right or wrong, simply another strategy to improve performance” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing Drugs). There are two main problems wrong with the use of drugs being legal. Health of athletes would drop devastatingly, and the true competition would become who gets lucky. “Some mourn the loss of yesterday's baseball heroes, while others argue that sport figures who use performance-enhancing drugs expose flaws in American culture” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing

The use of drugs date back to the ancient Olympic games. This is where the word doping originated from which was the Greek word “doop” (CITE). Performance enhancing substances also known as steroids are used for the improvement of human activity. Because drug use is also a huge thing outside the United States the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) was created as the first international governing body to prohibit doping. However, at the 1960’s Olympic the first athlete to die of doping was of the name Knut Jensen. He was a Danish cyclist who was found with narcotics in his system which resulted to his death. In result, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established to fight doping. The United States created their own anti-doping agency called United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Therefore, drug testing is an important factor in professional sports world-wide.

When it comes down to it he took steroids and testosterone and because of it won seven consecutive Tour De Frances. He won his first in 1999 and won every year up to and including 2005. He had been accused of drugs many times but every time he blatantly lied and said he had never taken any illegal substances. There had been many investigations and many old teammates planned to testify against him. But he kept pleading innocent. On August 24, 2012, the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Association) stripped him of his seven Tour wins and all honours won between 1999 and 2005 and they banned him from sport for life. He then came out in an interview with Oprah about all his past drug uses. This is totally unacceptable and is sending unacceptable messages to children as celebrities or sportspeople influence them a lot when they are young. He is influencing them that drugs are okay and that lying is acceptable. Therefore it is clear that Lance Armstrong is an appalling role model as he promotes lying and drug

Doping in sports has caused a lot of controversy throughout the years in the sports world from youth sports to the professionals. The World Anti-Doping Agency does their best to catch all the drug users but falls short with some people. This causes for an “unfair” advantage and goes against the true value of sport. It can make these players stronger and more athletic which causes more excitement for the fans to watch, more revenue for teams, and growing popularity. Using performance-enhancing drugs is banned in almost every sport, but with the allowed use of them could bring to the players and the sports teams themselves, could outweigh the negative effects of them being used in sports.

The most commonly discussed issue in sports of the 21st century is the use of performance enhancing drugs by professional athletes. Over the past four years, it has been nearly impossible to turn on the television without hearing something about athletes and these drugs. From former National League MVP Third Baseman Ken Caminiti's admission of steroid use in an issue of Sports Illustrated (Verducci, 2004) to 2006 Tour de France Champion Floyd Landis being stripped of title due to a failed doping test (Blue, 2006) virtually every sport is involved. Are performance enhancing drugs a substance that threatens the very existence of professional sports, or are they the future? Perhaps the issue

Doping has widely become known as the use of banned substances and practices by sports personnel particularly athletes in an attempt to improve sporting performances. No sensible fan of sport today denies the prevalence of drugs in virtually every major sport, yet none would argue they can ever be eliminated completely. Money alone would seem to guarantee that much. High profile athletes today are competing for high stakes, not just millions, but dozens of millions. The fear of losing everything career, opportunity, contracts, name, fame, and money is pushing more sportsmen all over the world to use performance enhancing drugs, mainly

The athletes who use drugs are cheating. They disobey the law and escape the punishment due to the advanced technology which makes it harder to detect the drugs. So, more and more athletes choose to improve their performance by this way. Furthermore, athletes show no respect to themselves and spectators if they take in drugs before the competition. Maybe they do not believe that they have the ability to achieve good results after hard training or can not bear the pressure of failure due to less training. What the spectators want to see is the real ability of the athletes though they also want to watch excellent competitions. In addition, the athletes who use drugs will never experience the joy and fun during the competitions and training. For the athletes who want to use drugs in games, what they are thinking about is only the medals, awards and money, they never really think of the significance of sports so they cannot enjoy the process of the competitions and training.

Many people believe that drug use in professional athletics is not a serious problem, however it is more widespread and serious than people think. In professional athletics the use of drugs is looked upon as somewhat of a serious problem, but is also very discrete and low key. Every once in a while one might see a prominent figure in a certain sport being reprimanded for the use of some outlawed drug, however this is just one of the many who happened to get caught. Athletes today seem to find no moral problem with using performance-enhancing drugs, or in other words cheating. Also many of them feel that because they are "stars" there should be no repercussions for their illegal activity.