After the 1988 summer Olympics the largest controversy surrounding anabolic steroid use emerged when gold medalist Ben Johnson was disqualified for doping, an infringement that stripped him of his medal. Consequently, the United States government ushered in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, labeling steroids a Schedule III controlled substance and possession without a medical prescription became a serious federal offense (Aretha 19). Those who were affected most by the ban were not the minority of users: competitive athletes, rather the overwhelming majority: recreational users hoping to polish their self image, enhance physical performance, and promote health. The belief anabolic steroids provide unfair advantage in drug-free competitions is
The year of 2004, baseball stars like Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi were involved in a scandal regarding steroid usage. On December 2, 2004, Jason Giambi pled guilty for his use of steroids for three seasons. The following day, Barry Bonds also confessed to using a cream, but he claimed, he had no knowledge of its contents. In his 2004 article, “This Is Your Country on Drugs” Carl Elliott, conveys his point of re-evaluating our use of prescribed drugs. Carl Elliott is a well-credited Professor at the University of Minnesota and often writes for New York Times.
The only physicians the author interviews in his book involve the topic of genetic doping. How could you write a book on steroids and not interview Harrison Pope, M.D. from Harvard, the leading expert on anabolic steroids? Jendrick dismisses the medical consequences of steroid use, blaming the media for sensationalizing and spreading misinformation about steroids. While I agree that the media uses scare tactics to alarm the public and grab more ratings, his claim that 99% of testicular shrinkage returns to previous size after discontinuation of steroids is more irresponsible.
Many people have a hard time separating movies from the real world and some people assume the character is that person in real life Denzel Washington is the first African American male to win an Academy Award for the Best Male Actor category. Washington won this award for his role as Detective Alonzo Harris in the movie Training Day. Surprisingly, this role was one of Washington's most ill-mannered, profane, selfish, and malicious characters. This was definitely the "bad guy" role for Washington and this is the film that won him an Academy Award. The irony in this situation is Denzel has played the good guy for so long that his acting talents were only recognized by the Academy when he played the stereotypical black male role, which is the ignorant, greedy, street thug.
In the past, boxing was probably one of the most important sports in America. Everyone wanted to watch them fight and they didn’t care how much it cost. It also got the community involved. For Example, In Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, It shows James Braddock, a regular person during the great depression that struggles to pay bills and maintain his family, want to box to get money. He gets his chance to box and he excels and proves everyone who doubted him wrong.
Now the debate still continues whether or not Lance Armstrong should be stripped of his Tour de France titles. Lance Armstrong is seen as one of the greatest cyclist of all times after consecutively winning titles from 1998-2005. His success throughout his cycling career has made him one of the most known cyclists in history but as of August 24, 2012 the US Anti-Doping Agency determined that Armstrong has used banned substances and erased his cycling titles, and further banned him for life from the sport (Lance Armstrong) His goal [of winning the Tour de France] led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his team-mates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own," concluded the report. "It was not enough that his team-mates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping programme outlined for them or be replaced (Fotheringham,
After the fight against Tommy Burns that gave him his title as the heavyweight champion, he became a hero to the blacks suffering under slavery. The Press stated that no satisfaction has ever been dealt to the slaves like that in over 50 years and it may have been a moment where it all starts to fall apart for the US society. Johnson fought and beat the next 5 contenders following Burns. As the white people in America feel humiliated by the extremely athletic and defeating blacks, Johnson’s success threatened all of America’s society. The Johnson v. Jeffries fight announced the battle of the century.
Even athletes that are clean in sports such as Lance Armstrong, Usain Bolt, and Michael Phelps have all been faced with criticism, as these athletes are accused by some of taking these performance enhancing substances, even though none of them have ever tested positive for these substances, and also tell people that they would never put these drugs into their bodies. In the Olympics, people cheat for national glory such as Marion Jones and Ben Johnson, and because of this, the Olympics are more tarnished than any other sport with performance-enhancing substances. Besides performance enhancing substances, there are others ways to cheat which are used by athletes in order to get an edge on the playing field. In sports such as college basketball, the players will fix games by using a point spread in order to get money that they will need for expenses such as living, as the NCAA gives them no money. Throughout sports, people will always try to gain a competitive edge in order to win games.
“Performance enhancing drugs in sport should be legalised.” Tim Chappell won the initial vote with 86% of students voting against drugs in sport. Steve Olivier started the debate by stating the five main arguments against his case which were that using drugs is against the nature of sport, drugs are unfair, it is unnatural, loss of freewill and causes harm. He continued by breaking down each point and highlighting its flaws. His first point stated that drugs were not against the nature of sport because sport is already an unnatural practice. He then went on to argue that sport is already economically unfair and poorer nations are disadvantaged.
Since football earnings fund other sports, this disparity affects athletes in all sports” (procon.org). Regarding the issue on consumers that are not harmed, in numerous ways, the BCS scheme harms millions and millions of consumers, most of whom despise the BCS. In fact, A 2007 Gallup poll showed that 85% of college football fans supported a change to a playoff system of some kind. sixty-nine percent of fans surveyed preferred the idea of a playoff tournament involving the top