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.