Doping In Sport

INTRODUCTION
One of the very frequently used quotes among sports commentators, journalists, and even professional athletes themselves says that ``No one remembers who came in second.`` Indeed, in highly competitive fields, such as professional sport, the glory is reserved for the victors, while no one wants to loose. This desire to win is under normal circumstances accompanied by years of rigorous preparation which consists of a specific regime including a strict diet, demanding mental and physical training, and increasingly creative ways of body regeneration. There is, however, an additional factor that can determine whether one makes history, or is simply forgotten as just another participant in the race, and that is doping. The main focus of this essay is to explore the issue of doping in broader sense, and to ask following questions: Why do athletes use performance-enhancing drugs (PED)? What can professional sports committees do to stop it? And are we all to blame? In the light of recent doping scandals, both sports officials and the public have seemed to accept that stopping doping in sports is a fight far from over. The issue of PED is therefore worth a serious discussion in order to create basis for a cleaner, fairer sport in the future.

DOPING IN SPORT
The term doping entered English dictionaries not more than 150 years ago, but the history of performance-enhancing substances tails back to the very roots of sport itself. In Ancient Greece, for example, athletes would drink special potions and eat specific meals with the hope that it would boost their performance (Buti & Fridman, 2001). As suggested by this historic record, doping has been deeply intertwined with sports from the very beginning. It should be, therefore, no surprise that the first well-documented case of doping in the modern era occurred during Summer Olympics in 1904 (Kremenik et al., 2006), that is shortly after the very first modern-day Olympics ever took place. The descri ption of said event is somewhat absurd by today`s standards: Charles Lucas, the coach of the marathoner Tom Hicks, simply doped his athlete with strychnine (a form of alkaloid stimulant) at the 22 mile mark of the race. As technology for testing athletes progressed exponentially, doping techniques had to take more sophisticated form, which has eventually made them superior to all known testing practices overall. This could be demonstrated by a study of de Hon et. al (2014) which focused on the prevalence of doping in elite sports. De Hon claims that it is ``virtually impossible to uncover the exact prevalence of a prohibited activity such as doping``, however, he adds that ``a combination of questionnaires using the Randomised Response Technique and models of biological parameters is able to provide the statistical possibilities to reveal accurate estimates of this often undisclosed practice.`` The results of his research yield an estimation of 14 39 % of current adult elite athletes who intentionally used doping a staggering number, considering that the official estimation provided by doping control test results is 1 2 % annually. The infamous case of Lance Armstrong illustrated this ``technological arms race`` well, for it shone the light on what had been a long suspected practice in cycling, wherein dosing multiple performance enhancement drugs became as common as the blood transfusions that came with it in order to cover the tracks. This case alone lead to a discussion which modern sport had seemed to need, and it radically shifted the perception of tackling doping in sports in general. Due to Armstrong`s scandal, the world of sports was reminded that the issue of doping could not be taken lightly, and, among other things, it also revealed that the indisputably noble goal of eradicating doping from the world of sports is much farther than the majority had thought. As previously stated in our introductory paragraph, there are serious questions regarding the issue of doping in sport that need answering. Firstly, why do athletes use performance-enhancing drugs? While this question is the most prominent, it is the hardest one to address due to its philosophical nature.
Nevertheless, sports organisations around the globe should pragmatically acknowledge that maintaining prevention, that is, inhibiting the reasons why professional athletes consider turning to PED, has a far greater potential to decrease the prevalence of doping than any other method of advanced testing. This could be ascribed to a very simple fact - the moment any advanced method of control becomes available is often the same moment when the physicians improve their own methods, while, naturally, the order of those events is usually reversed. Thus, the process of doping-free sport cannot be reliant only on banning the athletes who broke the rules, as that would be largely ineffective. Instead, sports organisations must gradually change the perception around winning at all cost, and strengthen a deeper understanding that it is morally unacceptable to achieve any results in a dishonest manner. This is, of course, easier said than done. As mentioned in the article by Schindler and Wolff, published in Frontiers in Psychology (2015), ``the direct assessment of explicit attitudes toward performance enhancing substances, for example Neuroenhancement or doping in sports, can be affected by social desirability biases and cheating attempts.`` In other words, diminishing social desirability of doping could be one of the factors worth looking into. The ideas that doping is good or doping is necessary to win , which are both reasonable and justifiable from the athletes` point of view (it is good as it increases one`s chances, it is necessary because 14 -39 % of competitors may be using it, too), have to be replaced with more ethically-oriented reasoning. Unfortunately, the fact that sports organisations themselves carry a history of covering up doping scandals for financial and political reasons does not help this cause. Our second question has been partially answered in the previous paragraph, although, in order to balance out our criticism of sports organisations as a whole, it is worth noting that their efforts of testing athletes for illicit substances - administering various blood and urine samples - combined with issued sets of rules that allow (or disallow) usage or certain PED, or at least limit the doses an athlete can take undetected, lead to safer professional sport. An important part of it was the creation of Biological Passport, - an individual, electronic record of athlete`s biological markers. This is a massive achievement. Keep in mind that only several decades ago, when various drugs entered the market, ``elephant-size dosing`` of PED had been seriously endangering athletes` health, most notably in Soviet Russia or East Germany. Even though our contemporary methods of testing fail to ensure doping-free professional sport, they at the very least made deaths from overdosing a rare occurence. This was not a small task. Thirdly, do we, the viewers of the spectacle that is professional sports, play our part? Consider this: One of the most exciting programs to watch during any Summer Olympics is without a shadow of a doubt 100m men. Usain Bolt, the successor of Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and Asafa Powell, all of whom have been caught doping, has continued to amaze us every year for the past decade. Bolt improved upon his first 100 m world record of 9.69 with 9.58 seconds in 2009. 0.11 seconds. That is the biggest recorded improvement since the start of electronic timing. And yet, we still expect a bit more... The ungrateful viewer of professional sport appreciates athletes whose performance is faster, stronger, better. But, it is worth noting that a human potential cannot grow forever. As paradoxical as it might seem, doping is potentially one of the things that make the field of professional athletics still fresh and exciting. Purely from the viewers` perspective, watching elite sportsmen and sportwomen competing without the imminent promise of breaking one of the world`s records, is equal to watching a rerun of the last year`s competition.

CONCLUSION
In a few short paragraphs, we have made an attempt to outline three pertinent questions: Why do athletes use performance-Enhancing Drugs (PED)? What can professional sports Committees do not stop it? And we are all to blame? At the theoretical level, we have tried to find the most compelling reasons why would an athlete potentially turn to doping. We have also showed that doping is not simply just a contemporary phenomenon, but it is de facto linked to professional sport from the very beginning. We have repeatedly argued that, given limited resources and insufficient technology, the most efficient way to tackle doping is its prevention. For it to be effective, this prevention program must take place from a very early age, and should focus on education - possible health risks and moral issues - related to doping.
We have also come to the conclusion that sports organisations in general must condemn doping, and firmly maintain this stance, even when the circumstances are not favourable, and the outcomes momentarily desirable. The pathway to a cleaner, fairer professional sport is treacherous, expensive and neverending, yet we should not capitulate.

SOURCES Buti, A., & Fridman, S. (2001). Drugs, sport and the law. Queensland, Australia: Scribblers Publishing.

Kremenik, M., Onodera, S., Nagao, M., Yuzuki, O., & Yonetani, S. (2006). A Historical Timeline of Doping in the Olympics (Part 1 1896-1968). Kawasaki journal of medical welfare, 12(1), 19-28.

de Hon, O., Kuipers, H., & van Bottenburg, M. (2015). Prevalence of doping use in elite sports: a review of numbers and methods. Sports Medicine, 45(1), 57-69

Schindler, S., Wolff, W., Kissler, J. M., & Brand, R. (2015). Cerebral correlates of faking: evidence from a brief implicit association test on doping attitudes. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 9, 139.
Overbye, M. B. (2016). Deterrence by risk of detection? An inquiry into how elite athletes perceive the deterrent effect of the current doping testing regime in their sport. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy.