The world groaned last week as former tennis star Martina Hingis retired amid drug use allegations. The question people were asking this time however was whether it was performance or party enhancing drug use. It seems both are causing officials’ headaches these days.
The week earlier came the announcement that Olympic three time gold medallist Marion Jones was up for steroid use prior to Sydney 2000. At the center of the scandal sits the San Francisco Bay Area Laboratory Co- operative (BALCO).
This lab was implicated in another controversy last week involving World Series baseball pitcher Paul Byrd who admitted he had injected human growth hormones for an arm injury. He was just one among several other top sports stars, including record homerun slugger Barry Bonds who had apparently been doing their shopping at BALCO.
Drugs and sport is an issue that refuses to go away whether it is their use for performance enhancement or for post match relief.
Alongside the old “work hard, play hard” ethic now comes the “party hard” mentality, which sees increasing numbers of athletes falling by the wayside. Recently in Australia legendary footballer turned TV presenter Chris Mainwaring passed away at the tender age of 41, the result of a weekend drug binge.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Australian Football League in a year that has been plagued by top players and their embarrassing rock n roll style ‘party-animal’ antics.
In this weekends’ national newspaper, the Australian, the editorial questioned whether perhaps it was time to put on the brakes and reassess the national sporting ethic. Concerned citizens are now demanding that club managers be held accountable ensuring their players are clean, before and after the match.
The point is it is not just the players’ lives and their family’s that are at stake but it is also the role modeling of young fans that is being impacted upon by sports stars’ increasingly wayward behavior.
As a child in sport loving Australia our teachers always tried to emphasize that the most important thing was your manner when you played a game. They called it “sportsmanship” or being a “good sport”.
It was a belief that no matter if you won or lost – as long as you tried and played by the rules – then that was all that was expected of you. No more, no less only your best. But today if you look around at the world of sport the phrase “nice guys finish last” may be more appropriate.
About the author:
Brendan John Worrell is currently a polisher for China Daily Website. He used to be a teacher and has taught at university and colleges in China, Australia and the UK and also at the high school and primary school level. In the field of writing Brendan has been published most recently in the Tiger Airways In-flight magazine ‘Tiger Tales’, writing about Hainan, Sanya, and in the upcoming issue the sister city relationship between Haikou and Darwin. He has also written travel articles for the Thai English Language Newspaper, The Bangkok Post and the Taiwanese English Language Newspaper, The Taipei Times. Brendan loves China, the Chinese spirit, his Chinese wife and the color red. He can be contacted at brendanjohnworrell@chinadaily.com.cn.
This Article is from: Health matters[http://stevenlichen.com]
URL: http://stevenlichen.com/2007/11/13/drugs-and-sport/
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