An injury or any other type of illness that prevents
an athlete from training can be one of the hardest and most difficult things to
overcome. As an athlete, I also had many failures and injuries in my career.
This year I was not able to train for 3 months and when I got back, I was
greatly out of shape and I was not able to compete and train at the level that
I did before. When reading Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike My Journey Back to
Life, the author dedicates the second part of the novel to his story of
training after his cancer was discovered and treated. The treatment of the
illness caused Armstrong to fall behind on training and was not able to come
back in the way that he wanted. The novel discusses the great amount of effort
that it took to get back into training after experiencing the worst possible
chemo and cancer treatment, “the sickness was in the details, in the nasty
asides of the treatment. Cancer was a vague sense of unwellness, but chemo was
an endless series of specific horrors” (126). Illness can cause people to begin
to see the patients as victims almost and that makes the audience see athletes,
such as Lance Armstrong that survived through cancer as heroes that should be
talked about. Lance Armstrong can be seen as a hero, because not only he is a
great cyclist that was the most well-known and most achieved cyclist in the
history of the sport, but also, because he is the story of overcoming
difficulties in order to pursue his dreams and achieve. It almost seems that
Lance Armstrong could be seen as a national hero. The treatment and the illness
are also shown to be life changing events for him, “I had never embraced my
life. I had made something of it, and fought for it, but I had never
particularly enjoyed it” (169). This is reflected in the book, as the author
shifts in the middle from only talking about training and having a huge need to
be successful and succeed at everything he does to becoming more about enjoying
life and seeing the beauty and other things that are associated with it, but
more bright side of life was also greatly associated with the treatment of
cancer, which was truly horrible, “I had nightmares. I had strange physical
reactions; for no apparent reason I would break out a sweat. The slightest
stress or anxiety would cause my body to become shiny with perspiration” (172).
The author describes many horrors that continued throughout his life, such as
the need to constantly visit a doctor for monthly check-ups or the medication
that he was forced to take. The struggles described in the book are horrible
and make the reader want to stop reading, but Lance Armstrong was able to
overcome these and “on September 4, 1997, I went … to announce my return to
cycling for the 1998 season” (176). This is where the story of a hero begins,
someone who for many years was left outside the cycling world and wanted to
come back into and become a champion or at least a well-known figure, but he
was denied spots on many of the top and most prestigious teams. Armstrong then
continued to train hard and tried to figure out what went wrong with his
cycling, “I went home. The problem was simply that I was rusty, so for two
solid weeks I worked on my technique, until I felt secure in the saddle” (216).
Eventually the hard work paid off, “I was the first American riding for an
American team, on an American bike, ever to lead the Tour de France” (227). The
rest of the story is very simple that Lance Armstrong went on to compete in the
Tour de France and win it a total of seven times. When all of this happened, he
was seen to be the greatest American patriot in the world and everyone praised
him for that. This story took a turn in 2012 when he was disqualified for
doping and all of his titles were stripped away. The interesting part is why
would an athlete that went through so much do this? Or was that the reason that
he got to be so good? Anyway his story is a story of a brave hero, who fought through
cancer and returned back to the thing that he loved his bike. It is cruel of
society to strip him away of the glory that he had before, but we like to
maintain a moral image and that causes us to be the people that we are today,
trying to maintain our status of glory and pride and purity.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Motivational T-Shirt
This is the design of the front and back of a T-shirt that I designed. My project has to do a lot with success and cost of it. My goal as a swimmer is that hopefully I will be able to represent Poland at the Olympic Games one day. This will most likely happen in 2020, but it is not guaranteed. The front of the T-shirt has 2:10 in 2020, which is my goal time in the 200 meter breaststroke (my main event) by the time I have to qualify for the Olympic games. Based on what the times of my competitors in Poland are right now that should be enough to qualify for the national team, but that also is not certain. It serves as more of an approximate of a time that I could go that would put me in the running for the spot on the team as well as a good long-term goal, which could be important in guiding my swimming career over the next 5 years. The coat of arms below is the eagle that is on the flag of Poland. On the back I have the year one more time as a reminder of the proximity of the Olympic Games and the location. The clip art is the general representation of breaststroke, which is my main event. The quote from Micheal Phelps, serves the purpose of motivation and believing that truly anything can be possible. Overall the shirt serves as motivation for my training and reflects the long-term goals that I have in swimming, which reflects the need to succeed and the idea that reaching your goals is crucial. I actually planned on making this shirt and the purpose of it would be to be a training shirt as an extra motivation in practice.
What does it take to succeed?
What does it take to succeed?
To
challenge yourself
Or accomplish nothing
What
will you do to succeed
To
satisfy your needs for glory
Or accomplish nothing
What
barriers will you break
To satisfy your needs for glory
How
much will you train
What
barriers will you break
To
go beyond what has been done
How
much will you train
To
do whatever it takes
To
go beyond what has been done
Set
a record no one will beat
To
do whatever it takes
Go
forward onto victory
Set
a record no one will beat
Live
the life of a champion
Go
forward onto victory
Learn from your mistakes
Live
the life of a champion
What is the price to be paid
Learn from your mistakes
To do anything it takes
What is the price to be paid
To
challenge yourself
To do anything it takes
What will you do to succeed
What will you do to succeed
The Extra Edge
I spent almost half of my life in the pool and my life is focused around school and swimming. I first began swimming at the age of 4 and ever since it has been a big part of my life. Through swimming I learned how to compete and win or even lose, I met many of my friends and made enemies. Swimming is my source of joy, but also sorrow and it taught me many things about life that only training a sport can teach. As I grew older, swimming became more intense and as I got faster the competition got tougher. It all quickly progressed, in less than a decade between the ages of 8 and 18, I went from a small boy still learning how to swim all of the strokes to a 6'2" swimmer who is about to enter college competition. My experience with sports is limited to only swimming, because I have never trained any other sport at the same level as I swim. As an athlete it is very easy to admire someone for achieving great success even in a different sport. When I was growing up, I looked up to all athletes from different sports as role models as someone that I would like to be when I grow up. One of these models was Lance Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion. He won one of the most difficult bike races in the world three times!!! That man is the definition of success. Besides winning Tour de France, he is a cancer survivor and father.
It was a great shock to me when I first heard that Armstrong was found to be cheating and eventually got all of his titles stripped away. As a teenager I was shocked, I did not understand what would motivate someone so great to cheat. I began to doubt his achievements and started to believe that the only reason that he achieved this success is because he cheated. As I grew older I began to realize why someone would cheat, why someone would take that extra edge to get themselves over the finish line faster and secure that first place. I first got Lance Armstrong's autobiography It's Not About the Bike My Journey Back to Life about two years ago, but I was not able to push myself and read something written by someone who can be seen as a disgrace to sportsmanship and competition around the world. I was able to convince myself to finally read the book to try and understand why someone would do such as thing, why would someone risk their entire reputation just to secure fame and glory above everything else, maybe the novel will give me an answer to any of those questions or at least can make easier for me to see and hypothesize why Armstrong did what he did.
The author begins the novel, by describing his deep patriotism and close connection with his bike, "I want to die at a hundred years old with as American flag on my back and a star of Texas on my helmet" (1). For Armstrong the bike is the most important part of his life, but the question is for me, why did he have to cheat to get to the level that he is at? Would it be simply better for him to achieve what he could have achieved without cheating? Would he be as good without cheating or would simply go as unrecognized? Was the blood transfusions the thing that got him over the edge?
Lance Armstrong goes on this very interesting tangent about how in the city that he grew up in, Plano, he was unrecognized, because the people there only played football, "In Plano, Texas, if you weren't a football player you didn't exist" (21). So, Armstrong took a different approach to be famous, by attempting to work in a way more difficult sport, "having your feet clamped to the bike pedals churning at 20 to 40 miles per hour, for hours and hours and days on end across whole continents" (41). This description gives the reader the insight to the great difficulty of the training and competition for road biking, but so far I do not see why someone who is slowly progressing with training and made the US cycling team right after finishing high school would want to try and cheat, because his career seems to be about to take of regardless. Obviously, like in any other sport his starts and early international races were not easy and he did not win, "my results continued to veer up and down, as crazily as I wove through a peloton. I'd attack at time. I'd just go" (55). So far the this biography had given me a lot to thing about why someone who is slowly progressing to international fame would want to cheat even before he got diagnosed with cancer.
It was a great shock to me when I first heard that Armstrong was found to be cheating and eventually got all of his titles stripped away. As a teenager I was shocked, I did not understand what would motivate someone so great to cheat. I began to doubt his achievements and started to believe that the only reason that he achieved this success is because he cheated. As I grew older I began to realize why someone would cheat, why someone would take that extra edge to get themselves over the finish line faster and secure that first place. I first got Lance Armstrong's autobiography It's Not About the Bike My Journey Back to Life about two years ago, but I was not able to push myself and read something written by someone who can be seen as a disgrace to sportsmanship and competition around the world. I was able to convince myself to finally read the book to try and understand why someone would do such as thing, why would someone risk their entire reputation just to secure fame and glory above everything else, maybe the novel will give me an answer to any of those questions or at least can make easier for me to see and hypothesize why Armstrong did what he did.
The author begins the novel, by describing his deep patriotism and close connection with his bike, "I want to die at a hundred years old with as American flag on my back and a star of Texas on my helmet" (1). For Armstrong the bike is the most important part of his life, but the question is for me, why did he have to cheat to get to the level that he is at? Would it be simply better for him to achieve what he could have achieved without cheating? Would he be as good without cheating or would simply go as unrecognized? Was the blood transfusions the thing that got him over the edge?
Lance Armstrong goes on this very interesting tangent about how in the city that he grew up in, Plano, he was unrecognized, because the people there only played football, "In Plano, Texas, if you weren't a football player you didn't exist" (21). So, Armstrong took a different approach to be famous, by attempting to work in a way more difficult sport, "having your feet clamped to the bike pedals churning at 20 to 40 miles per hour, for hours and hours and days on end across whole continents" (41). This description gives the reader the insight to the great difficulty of the training and competition for road biking, but so far I do not see why someone who is slowly progressing with training and made the US cycling team right after finishing high school would want to try and cheat, because his career seems to be about to take of regardless. Obviously, like in any other sport his starts and early international races were not easy and he did not win, "my results continued to veer up and down, as crazily as I wove through a peloton. I'd attack at time. I'd just go" (55). So far the this biography had given me a lot to thing about why someone who is slowly progressing to international fame would want to cheat even before he got diagnosed with cancer.
Success is a Bar Set Very High
Everyday watching and broadcasting
sports brings entertainment to millions around the world. People cheer and
support their local and national teams and as they succeed and fail. They place
huge expectations on the athletes to win, forcing athletes in all sports to
feel pressure to succeed and try to match the expectations set by the fans as
well as the goals set by themselves. Competitive sports are a very stressful
for the athletes who always motivate themselves to improve. The need to achieve
and match the expectations set often forces athletes to cheat, by using various
forms of performance-enhancing substances, while understanding the negative
consequences of cheating and ruining the integrity of the game.
Using any form of performance
enhancing substance in athletics is rising around the world. In America 15
million people use performance-enhancing drugs (Schafer). The problem grows as
more and more athletes feel the pressure to preform and succeed. Using illegal
substances in sports is not only immoral, but also can result in many negative
health-related side-effects, but those threats does not scare athletes as “65 percent of steroid users would be willing to use a pill
or powder, including dietary supplements, if it guaranteed they would reach
their athletic goals, even if it might harm their health” (Shafer). The guarantee
of reaching an athletic goal or trying to secure a good result drives many
athletes to use drugs and other forms of doping. There have been many examples
throughout history of athletes that have continued to use such substances even
after being caught and disqualified, for example “The
Canadian sprinter [Ben Johnson] was stripped of his Olympic gold medal in 1988
after testing positive for steroids. Johnson was then banned for life after a
second positive test in 1993” (Katz). The pressure to succeed is so extreme
that athletes are willing to risk everything they have to gain glory and become
a hero.
Pressure
exists for both professional athletes as well as high school student-athletes.
Practicing a sport in high school is very fun and allows students to meet new
people and to expand their horizons, but it also creates pressure to succeed.
The need to achieve is associated with college recruiting and admissions. In
the current system, only “four states have established steroid screening programs at the
high school level,” (Shafer) which makes it very easy for high school
athletes to use performance enhancing substances and even, “6 percent of 12th grade
males reported using steroids” (Shafer). The goal of many high school students
is to get into a good college and get as much money as possible to go to that
college. Many top colleges offer full and partial scholarships for athletes,
which gives student-athletes a chance to get into a better college and go there
for smaller tuition. For many families sending a child to college is very
expensive and that creates pressure for high school athletes to succeed in
athletics at all costs in order to get a chance to go to a better college,
which as a resulted gives the honest and clean athletes less opportunities for
a college scholarship. The system does not promote cheating, but makes it very
easy for students to use illegal substances in order to increase their performance,
leaving the honest players behind.
Cheating has many positive effects, such as
enhancing performance or having a chance to go to a better college, but it is
also illegal and can stain all the achievements an athlete accomplished. Lance
Armstrong is a very interesting case that shows the impacts of cheating and reflects
the mixed reactions that people have. Lance Armstrong in his autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike My Journey Back to
Life writes about his glory and fame during his first Tour de France, “I
was the first American riding for an American team, on an American bike, ever
to lead the Tour de France” (227). Through his success Armstrong was
able to create an image of a hero around him. He won the Tour de France seven
times and every time he raced for an American team. He was also a cancer survivor
and a diehard American, "I want to die at a
hundred years old with as American flag on my back and a star of Texas on my
helmet" (1). He gained a lot of attention for his accomplishments
and when he won for the first time, he became a national hero, “Nike
wanted me to hold a press conference in New York … The people of Austin wanted
to have a parade. Nike offered me a private jet to fly me to the States and back
to Europe in a single day” (255). All of this success was a result of hard work
that Lance Armstrong put into his training, but it was also accomplished by
cheating. All the glory that Armstrong achieved was suddenly stained and people
lost all of the respect they had for the great athlete. The pressure and need
to succeed for Armstrong were so great that he did everything in order to win. After
coming out with cheating, Armstrong lost a lot of his support, but there were
still many people that saw him as a great cyclist. Some people tried to
understand, why Armstrong cheated, “…Gibney insists on
seeing him as a complex character, the sum of contradictory parts. ‘I'm not
defending Lance's lie - I'm just saying he's not all bad,’ he
said” (New York Times), while others saw Armstrong as a cheater and nothing
else, “it reflects poorly on the media that Lance Armstrong can
come back and be welcomed, but they are still absolutely in awe of him”
(Broadbent). Armstrong is a very extreme example of an athlete that was an
international athletic star and got caught with cheating. There are many other
athletes that had their titles stripped away including Olympic medals,
championship titles and other top prices, “PED use
has been documented among Olympic athletes, weightlifters, football players,
NASCAR drivers, and competitive cyclists” (Shafer).
Even
with all of the negative and positive consequences, many athletes still chose
to use performance-enhancing substances, “as the competitive level and sporting rewards
increased, so too did the tendency to accept physical, emotional and
nutritional abuse” (Westmore). Every year athletes around the world
chose to use performance-enhancing substances in order to succeed and try to
achieve their goals. The need to cheat for athletes comes from the athletes
having low self-esteem and not believing in success, “These players make the
mistake of attributing their self-doubting feelings to … a win or a loss, so it
makes sense to them to do something about these circumstances in order to
overcome these feelings” (Kramer). Everyone wants to have the guarantee of
success and when athlete is training for the Olympics it almost seems logical
to cheat. “This is also why some players go through periods when cheating seems
illogical -- and why sometimes it seems like a reasonable thing to do,” (Kramer)
but eventually athletes get caught up in a cycle of cheating. It becomes a
habit, because athletes fear that when they stop cheating, they will stop improving
and achieving their goals. As a result, most athletes chose to continue to
cheat throughout their career, fearing that they might lose their success and stop
achieving their goals.
There
are many rewards and payoffs for cheating, but there are also risks and
consequences. It is a balancing act that many athletes have perfected over the
years, but as Garrett Kramer claims, “Believing that your feelings come from
the outside, at its core, is both perplexing and enticing -- it's a fraudulent
entity that explains cheating in sports”. Honesty and integrity in
sports is what keeps the game live, it is what makes it fair and interesting to
watch. The unpredictability of a game is what makes it a game, not a scripted
play, but the moment athletes use performance enhancing drugs, the game loses
these elements. Part of being an athlete is training as hard as possible and
trying to achieve goals, while being aware of the possibility of failing. A
true athlete should embrace failing and look back at mistakes and learn from them.
This is the beauty of any sport and adding any form of cheating simply ruins it
and makes the game boring and predictable. Consequently, any form of cheating
should be unacceptable, because it ruins the integrity of the sport.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Lance, and Sally Jenkins. It's Not about
the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. New York: Putnam, 2000. Print.
Broadbent,
Rick. "Cooke claims 'cult of Lance' negates fight against doping Series:
Sport." Times of London. 20 May. 2015: 57. eLibrary. Web. 24 May. 2015.
"Entertainment:
Gray Matter." New York Times Magazine. 08 Mar. 2015 eLibrary. Web. 24 May. 2015.
Katz, Jefrey. "The Wide World of Sports Cheating." The
Wide World of Sports Cheating. NPR, 15 Jan. 2008. Web. 22 May 2015.
Kramer, Garret. "Why Athletes Cheat: The Overlooked
Answer." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 31 Sept.
2013. Web. 22 May 2015.
Schafer, Michael F., MD, and Mary Ann Porucznik. "“If
You’re Not Cheating, You’re Not Trying”." “If You’re Not Cheating,
You’re Not Trying”. American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, June
2008. Web. 22 May 2015.
Westmore,
Ann. "What price sporting glory?." Australasian Science. 01 Oct. 2000: 43. eLibrary. Web. 24 May. 2015.
Pressure to Win
You worked so hard!!!
You are ready
but what if you don’t succeed
then all the effort is worthless
you need an extra edge
Just a little boost
of something special
… try your best
this is the last meet before college
college coaches will look at this
you need to swim fast
or else you don’t get recruited
remember
that practice you missed
that set you failed
that race you lost
You remember
Barely…
Outtouched…
Easy…
You won’t succeed
You need that boost
Or you will lose...
|
You worked so hard!!!
It’s time to preform
All the work will finally pay off
you are ready
Just a little boost
of confidence
in success
there will always be another race
this isn’t your final race
just try your best
You are ready to get recruited
you trained so hard in practice
remember
I was sick...
I was tired...
I was stressed out…
I remember
that cut I made
that race I won
that month I trained
So, I am ready
I will succeed
Or I will win...
|
Letter
Dear Reader,
I did project in order to elaborate more on the
reasons, why someone would want to cheat. In my opinion, the most significant
reason, why athletes cheat is that they are surrounded with high expectations
that they fear that they will not be able to achieve. My thesis and my
expository essay discuss the reasons, why people cheat, such as the high expectations
and that even though there are many athletes that get caught each year cheating
they still continue to cheat and risk being seen as a cheater. This is also
closely related to my golden thread, which is that success is an expectations
that keeps on increasing and that once someone succeeds they will continue to
want more and to go above and beyond the previous expectations. It is very easy
to become hungry for more success and to achieve more once someone achieves
something. Success is time consuming and requires a lot of hard work, but the
reward can be even greater.
My pieces in this multi-genre project discuss all of
the various aspects success and its significance and importance in the lives of
athletes. The first piece is a quality piece about success that uses personification
of success to summarize the life of Lance Armstrong. Success is a very dominant
yet lonely force. If someone wants to be really successful in anything that
they do they must almost abandon everything else that they do and only focus on
the things that truly matter to them. It is for that reason that a lot of
people do not like success as well as the fact that people eventually become
very jealous of the accomplishments of an individual. This presents the nasty
side of success that shows how people can be jealous of one’s success and will
even try to do anything they can to make them go away. The first piece also
discusses the importance of being honest, while succeeding, because if someone
ends up cheating then everything they do might be brought to questioning and as
a result they might not achieve anything and be remembered as a cheater. In my
second piece, which is a T-shirt design, I try to relate the idea of high
exceptions and success to myself. As a swimmer, I train very hard and that comes
at sacrifice, such as not exceeding in school as much as I want to or giving up
time that I could spend with friends for another practice and another chance to
improve my swimming. The T-shirt shows my goals as a swimmer and what I want to
become and that is a very important goal for me, to go to the Olympics one day.
My third piece discusses the fear that an athlete might have before a race or a performance, which is supposed to
help the reader visualize and try to image, where the idea of cheating might
come from and how the process is very stressful. The poem is a pantoum and I try
to extend it a couple more lines to keep the idea going and to incorporate all of
the negative through and the pressure felt before a race, which is crucial to
understanding the importance and the need to succeed that an athlete can feel
before a race. Finally, my last piece is a convincing piece that shows how an
athlete can be convinced to cheat, how the last moments of insecurity before a
race can cause an athlete to try and take some performance-enhancing substances
in order to secure a position or make sure that they win and succeed. This is
another poem, but is meant to be read as two voices. On the left we have a
voice of dishonesty trying to convince the swimmer on the right that they are
not capable of achieving their goals and that they need something extra to get
to succeed in the race that is about to happen. All of the pieces show the
various phases and steps in cheating, weather it is insecurity or the need to
cheat or the pressure to accomplish a goal. All of these combine and finally
force an athlete to cheat, which is very harmful to the athlete if they get
caught.
Overall, in this project I tried to show to the
audience the significance of the issue of cheating in the world of sports.
Cheating ruins the integrity of the game. This project has also made up my mind
about cheating. Originally, I thought that there could be ways that cheating
could be tolerated, but after researching and realizing that it ruins the
experience of the game, I realize that it should be punished. Even if it does
not help the teams achieve their goals, such as the well-known Deflategate, the
athletes that cheat should be banned from the sport, because they question loyalty
and the very integrity of the sport. I believe that it is important to look at
the reasons why athletes cheat, because that might help preventing future
generations from cheating, by reducing the pressure and the need to succeed
that they face, but it should never be any form of justification for any type
of cheating.
Sincerely,
Maciej Olszewski
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