RAHUL MEHAN
Doping by athletes is pretty scandalous. Doping is defined as ‘administering drugs to an athlete in order to inhibit or enhance sporting performance’. At times it's difficult to believe that some athletes, including many of our idols, make the decision to use performance-enhancing drugs. Athletes dope for a number of reasons such as wanting to win badly for money or for their country. Nonetheless it is still cheating and it creates an unfair advantage. It also creates a bad reputation for the sport and can tarnish the name of the athlete for decades to come.
Shane Warne, Lance Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Diego Maradona, Maria Sharapova. Recognise the names? They are all champions, leaders, legends - and cheaters! These athletes, who have been caught by doping officials, have won many prestigious awards. For example Maria Sharapova has won an incredible 5 Grand Slam titles, one at Wimbledon in 2004, one at the US Open in 2006, one in 2008 at the Australian Open and two at the French Open in 2012 and 2014! But should she be stripped of her winnings after being caught using a banned substance? At the 2016 Australian Open she tested positive for using meldonium and she was punished by the International Tennis Federation, which handed her a two year ban (later reduced to 15 months after Sharapova appealed to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS)). ‘Meldonium increases an athlete's endurance and exercise tolerance and it also reduces recovery time, which is really important in high-level athletes’ asserts Dr Robert Glatter, a New York physician. The drug also manages to increase and improve blood flow by reducing oxygen consumption. Meldonium became a only banned substance on 1st January 2016. However, Sharapova had been taking this drug since 2006 for health problems and “had not tried to use a performance enhancing substance”.
In the case of Maria Sharapova, I think she has been unfortunate in the fact that she had been using the substance 10 years prior to the banning of it and she also had no previous record of doping. However, she is a professional athlete who has to keep up to date and monitor the new rules and regulations. She failed to check with her agent to see if the substance was still allowed and this ultimately led her to inadvertently cheating. Russell Fuller said "CAS has repeatedly set a player's bar of responsibility lower than the ITF thinks it should be. As a result, there must be a concern that some players may in future take anti-doping less seriously than they should." I believe that this thought is concerning because if the organisations are too soft on players that cheat, this will mean that in the future people may cheat to win Grand Slams and individual awards, but the pros will outweigh the cons as they will get off with only a light punishment.
When we think of doping we often think about humans injecting drugs into themselves, or ingesting them in their meals. However, earlier this year the Medina Spirit won the premier horse race in the US, the Kentucky Derby. A week later, it was announced that the horse's post-race drug sample contained the banned corticosteroid betamethasone. Corticosteroids are used to reduce pain in joints and tendons so that a horse can carry on racing through injury. I believe that this is horrendous as it endangers horses' welfare. Also, let's not forget that the horse has no say in whether or not it should have the drug, and be forced to push through its pain. The use of such substances completely violates animal rights. The trainer of the horse in question is the most successful trainer in American racing, Bob Baffert. At first he pleaded his innocence but then suggested that the drug might have been applied as an anti-fungal cream.
Now you might think ‘okay he has made a mistake’, however this was in fact the 30th time one of his horses has failed a drug test! Personally, I find this astonishing because not only is Mr Baffert still looking after and training horses, putting the animals at risk, but he is further tarnishing the already damaged reputation of the sport. In the past year, 27 people connected with horse racing in the US have been charged with doping related offences, but without a doubt, many will have slipped under the radar. Mr Baffert has won the Kentucky Derby seven times and he has still been able to keep all his winnings including the $3 million from this race until a second positive test of the horse*.
It's true that the "court of public opinion" considers the drug violations to be far more significant than the victories, and Mr Baffert's bad reputation is considered to be irreversible, but at what cost to the sport itself? I think it's critical that doping in horse racing continues to be banned because it's all too tempting when the negative side-effects of doping don't affect the humans, but rather the horses who have no choice about what is happening to their own body. To me it's clear that the reprimands for the trainers caught cheating must also be a lot harsher: a couple of years' ban from the sport and winnings being stripped**. At the moment the consequences are too light and the cheating from trainers keeps occurring, demonstrating that the sport needs to wise up on the topic of doping, because of its effects on reputation, integrity and animal rights.
However, in my view, in the case that doping does not harm the horse in any way, all trainers should actually be allowed to dope. This is because it means the horses will be able to run faster, whilst still maintaining a level playing field. This means that nobody would be able to cheat, the reputation of the sport wouldn't be dismissed, and the sport would also become more entertaining, with the horses running faster, and for longer!
To conclude, I think that doping in sport should be banned because it causes harm to people's bodies and it is also unethical to cheat against other athletes who have worked hard and don’t cheat. In many cases the cheats go unnoticed and honest athletes don't even win in the end. Let's not forget that doping also creates a bad image for sport, and harms the athletes themselves! That said, I believe there could be a place for doping in horse racing specifically, if the horses' health could be guaranteed.