D oping Concept of Doping Doping is not a new trend brought on by the advent of modern pharmaceutical agents. History shows that athletes in the ancient Olympic Games were willing to take plant extracts in a bid to perform better than their competitors. Performance enhancing drugs and dietary supplements have been around since the ancient Olympic Games. Because of the ethical considerations relating to unfair advantage during competition and the potential for the adverse effect, most athletic governing bodies have generated a list of substances that are banned from national and international competitions.
Doping, is a term used for performance enhancing drugs in sports and often understood as the use of such drugs which are considered helpful to improve athletic performance. Many drugs have been banned in sports as they are deemed to provide an unfair advantage, pose a health risk, or are seen to violate the ‘spirit of sport’. The use of banned drugs by athletes is referred to as ‘doping’. Doping is defined by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) as, ‘the use of any method or substance that might harm the athlete, in a quest to gain an unfair advantage, over his or her fellow competitors’.
Hence, training at altitude to increase the blood’s ability to carry oxygen is allowed, but the use of drugs, to achieve the same result is considered unethical and prohibited by the authorities. Rigorous testing procedures have shown many notable athletes to be trying to ‘beat the system’ by taking such drugs. Most notably, Ben Johnson, in , who won the m sprint in a new world record time of .79s, was tested positive for steroids, and lost his gold medal and world record. The reasons to ban doping in sports are mainly the health risks of performance-enhancing drugs, the equality of opportunity for athletes, and the exemplary effect of drug- free sport for the public.
Anti-doping authorities state that using performance-enhancing drugs goes against the ‘spirit of sport’. Why Doping? Most athletes take drugs— •• to enhance their physical performance in an attempt to prevent them falling behind other competitors