Now this is going a bit too far. I loved Marion Jones, now she's turned out to be the same kind of asshat as Floyd Landis. Word is, she's flunked the first part of a drug screening. Now the other shoe is ready to drop.
A couple weeks ago I discussed the ethics of performance enhancement in sports with Deet. He was all against it without hesitation, whereas I was waffle-like in my arguments. On the one hand, I could care less if the NFL approved it. And although the baseball scandal is a shame, it is what the fans want, a home-run derby. I think that goes counter to the true spirit of baseball, all the big homeruns and whatnot, but on the whole I'm kinda blah on that. Basketball needs no performance enhancement. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the spirit of the game. Basketball requires too much skill and subtlety for some drug to make a material difference, I believe the same thing is true of soccer.
But Cycling? Track? Weightlifting? Swimming? Those need to be pure.
But just this weekend I had one of those strange experiences when I was surrounded by a bunch of wild kids. It was at a public health fair in the Gardena area sponsored by a local church. It brought to mind how much of a difference it can make to folks that certain institutions have to have a great deal of integrity. That counts a bit less as one rises in society and has more options at one's disposal. So finally Deet's words started to ring true. You cannot have kids looking up to sports heroes and believing the only way to get up in the world is through the use of drugs.
It must be said of me two things that make this particularly important. I wear glasses and I am allergic to penicillin. So I am very wary of taking any drugs I don't absolutely need. That includes aspirin and cough syrup. I've only recently, meaning the past year or so, been willing to take Motrin. So it's critical to me that I am able to trust someone to have my best interests at heart when it comes to health matters. I recognize that athletes, more than just about anyone, understand the effect that drugs have on their bodies. So while I am perfectly willing to let them do what they want to do with regard to performance enhancement in the non-pure sports, I am more concerned today about the effect on kids.
Kids in athletics are not going to get anything near the kind of medical attention top athletes get. They're not valuable enough to doctors, schools or even parents to get a proper regimen. So any effect a doping technique has on a sport is going to be inevitably bad for kids. This augurs against my prior acceptance of the idea of different classes for the adults of 'pure' without drugs and 'pro' with drugs.
Thankfully, kids have video games and extreme sports. All still pure.
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