Archive for July 21st, 2008
Modern sports and doping
Time and again we see news articles covering some new doping scandal. After years, perhaps decades, of effort, the Olympic Games still have not come to grips with this problem. The simple fact of the matter is that the modern Olympics, like just about every major sporting event or competition, is an immensely lucrative business. Athletes are motivated to compete in the Olympic Games as much for profit as for the fame and glory.
Under those conditions there is an obvious, and irresistible, incentive for athletes to gain every competitive advantage, including taking performance-enhancing drugs. Testing for drug use is then a futile effort bound to end in failure. In fact, we can understand the reluctance of officials to introduce “too strict” enforcement of prohibition on drug use in this light; making too much of a fuss could jeopardise the entire enterprise. Just look at how the Tour de France has suffered commercially from all its controversies over drug use.
There exists no incentive to administer a testing regime which would bring bad publicity to the Games. The incentive for such expensive cheating will not diminish until we take the money out of the Games. But then paradoxically, the Games would become something about which we would probably care very little.
So in the modern world, the way to keep sports “clean”, whether it’s drugs or some other form of cheating, is to not care about it. You don’t believe me? Well then, in addition to the Olympics, try reading up on doping in baseball. Or the cheating in American football (heard what the Patriots have been up to?). How about match fixing in the Italian Serie A? I could go on, but I think the point is made.
