Would You Cheat If You Could?

It sounds like, if you have some money, you could easily cheat the testing just by injecting mixing a ratio of 3.75:1 testosterone:epitestosterone. No need for the gene to cheat the testing, just a somewhat educated trainer assisting your doping program could do.

NO.

I would rather lose with honour than win by cheating.

Is it really cheating? The testosterone only helps your muscle tissue recover from the strain of exercise faster allowing you to work harder to develop the muscles. You still have to go work out, and more often than a typical person. It is a naturally occurring hormone, much like birth control pills or cortisone (unlike pain killers like aspirin). Hormone levels are effected by many influences including genetics, sex, sexual activity, stress, food, etc.. So maybe someone else is enhanced by manipulating some of these factors in their lives (say having your government fully fund you athletic endeavor, I hear this happens with many amateur athletes outside the US). Steroids are like taking HGH to grow more tissue faster, or controlling a womans period to get peak performance cycles with birth control pills, or providing a better equipment and trainers/coaches to promote better, more efficient training, or paying people to train so they do not suffer stress or loss of efficient training due to work outside the sport, pain killers that allow players to perform with minimal pain, etc.. And, all of these come down to money. So what we really need to do is even out the playing field by controlling the money involved, there is little reasons to seek enhancements if you won't get cut for not performing at the level of those who are enhanced. Of course then i guess player would get paid under the table for extrordinary performances, driving them to seek enhancements agents.

Additionally, I am not sure there is any honor in losing just because you weren't as good as the other person, there just isn't any dishonor in losing because you would not cheat.

Like you said...

Football? in england? My point however, was that it is not different than other performance enhancements we already allow, none of which show the true performance of the players on their own. Keep in mind that the sports and colleges only banned steroids in response to the fact they were made illegal in the 1990's, and public perception (and outrage) about young children using them to be competitive. There are still any number of performance enhancements used that do not get the press coverage, because they are not as effective as steroids (or now HGH, though only few people really know about this). So the effect has become that a athlete on steroids get chastized worse than say a politician who date rapes women or uses cocaine (and actually in Washington you can become mayor even after being arrested for it with the sting video all over TV).

Go get 'im you feisty kitty. Get yourself an extra herring

cheers

RCE questions: "Is it really cheating? The testosterone only helps your muscle tissue recover from the strain of exercise faster allowing you to work harder..." etc., etc.

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Uh-huh.

In other words: "If you want something bad enough, any rationale for getting it will do."

me too

it's better than cheating..hihi

If any one would like to cheat he would never declare so. I would never think of cheating for small piece gold medal neither for any big gain.

Suresh Sharma.

It's all about being fueled by the passion of whatever sport or event a person is into. If I was talented enough to be on the world stage the rush would give me all the enhancement I need. Why risk one of your passions and respect?

That is a older model predating the 1960s. Now great performance means winning at all costs (and cheating is frequently overlooked if you achieve something great). Since the 1960s winning has equated to huge gains in political influence, television and movie deals, endorsement contracts, free gifts, etc.. Think about it, if Tom Brady came out after the superbowl to support a candidate it would strongly influence the election, and how many football players who were great for their time have become bad (but overpaid) movie actors after their careers, How many gold medalists get endorsement deals for years with products like pepsi or wheaties, and how many get expensive clothes or jewelry personally tailored and given to appear somewhere wearing it and get to keep the items. Athletes are a male version of what someone like Paris Hilton is to teenage girls. Even if you get caught cheating most people will overlook this if you were great for even a short period in the sport (and the attention might actually make you more famous and marketable).

RCE, I don't think I would like to live in your world, full of cheats liars and money making scoundrels...

I'm with Del and the vast majority on this, cheating is just that, you are cheating on yourself as well as cheating on others.

Next you will be saying lieing and deception are the norm where you live?

What planet are you on?

testing people for drugs genetically because a few bad eggs use them is a morally dangerous thing. you can not hold the whole accountable because a fraction break the rules. that usually leads to anger in the whole, and more and more not taking you seriously.

Whatever it takes to get what I want.

Cheating is a challenge. Cheating is also depends on definition. What is cheating now may not be cheating in the future.

Olympic is not about winning. So if one participated in full Olympic spirit, one will not care who win. If one don't care about winning, one won't care if other are cheating.

We've already lost the Olympic spirit.

I am not sure why athletes get so much press about perceived cheating or misconduct, when we let politicians get away with much blatant action with much great and more direct consequences to ourselves. somehow we have gotten a bit askew in our moral compass when we look to poorly educated athletes as a standard for higher morality, but expect our leaders to automatically be corrupt and less ethical than the lowest 20% of our community. I four politicians and religious leaders make unethical behavior more their normal course of action then ethical behavior, I would expect that lesser educated athlete who are young and paid way more in one contract than their entire family made for the last 200 years to wander from a ethical path, and also to try and ensure their incomes. Cheating has a risk of being caught, but, at least in football, for eveyone one caught there are 20 others getting away with it. The athletes learn early that keeping in line and performing well means their secret does not get released to the press, it always seems to be those who are outspoken and whose egos exceed their value to the industry who are thrown to the press.

You would know your own limitations at that level. So you would be cheating no one but yourself.

I think it depends what sport you are talking about. I think you've got to be a lunatic to put anything in your body to improve performance. (theres a lot of loonies about!) But to look at a competition like motor racing, the teams all have a dept designated to finding a loop hole in the rules. Is this cheating? Or maximizing the cars potential within the rules? I know of one team in in the 80's and 90's in the British Touring Car Championship who used to go out for qualifying, set a fast time, come in for a change of tyres, go out and do one slow lap, then come in and go to the weigh-bridge, where the car was always withing the weight limits. It turns out the last set of tyres would be full of water! Now, there wasn't actually a rule against putting water in the tyres at the time, but there was about running the car underweight.That's cheating, gaining an unfair advantage by a clear contravention of the rules, for financial or other gain.

Substitute water for steroids...

(Apparently, this was common knowledge in the pit lane, but the car was so uncompetitive, no-one minded. It made for a better show! When the car got quicker, as it was developed, opinion changed. So is it cheating if everybody benefits?)

Steroids only became an issue when the age of users started getting younger and baby boomers started placing greater performance pressures on their children in high school. Those sports dads that you sarted seeing alot in the press in the 90s that were willing to assault coaches in public and sue schools because their child didn't get the play time the father felt was necessary for a future in professional sports. Compounded by the athletes who would use a roid-rage excuse in the late 90s for their violent childish outburst, which you did not see happening in the 70s or 80s. Football players were using steroids back in the 1970s commonly, but in the 1990s there was a explosion of use by non-football athletes and younger football players (high school age) that got news coverage. There is a valid concern about teenagers using steroids as it adversely effects their growth and development. However, the numerous football players who have used them in the past that I know never had any real issues, except making 100 times more than they would have in any other profession. In some ways it is like the tire thing you mentioned. As long as it was the adult football players, and it was fairly across the board for all, it was not an issue. However when a few athletes in other sports started outperforming others who had not caught onto the new advantage or children, then it was an issue. If that tire trick had been used by a good performing team or an accident had occurred where children were killed then, things might be different when the press found out.

Steroids only became an issue when the age of users started getting younger

Well, If thats your opinion, fine. However, I believe that when the pics below show the excepted result of steroid use, which they do, then theres an issue. Ok, I know it's an extreme example, but it's fundamentally only a matter of degree.

Cheating is not winning!!! These guys may have won an event but they have not won at life. May be a short lived win at that. Their idea of muscled body is just as harmful as young girl starving themselves into that twiggy look.

Hmm, so it sounds like steroid use shoud adversely effect your life?

So as an example, lets say i was a body builder in the 1970s with about a 100 IQ limited education and no long term intellectual or professional skills growth capacity. So I take a large amount of steroids become one of the best in body building for that short term. What are the odds of me obtaining a movie or a a television contract out of all my professional body builder peers of that period. Then what would the odds be from that same peer group that I would become governor of a State with an economy and population on par with most european nations. Now lets look at those in the same peer group who did not use steroids, or the general population, from that same period. How do the fair in comparison?

Your examples body was not over done as in the pictures above. If he had it is questionable if he would have gotten those acting contracts. Which have led to the other good fortunes in his life. Time will tell in how this effects his health as he ages.

What you are in supporting is the use of drug to a quick end where one would have to work hard to achieve it naturally.

Umm, the point was about steroid use, not the degree of modification to physical shape. Additionally, i suspect that you would be hard pressed to find any athlete who had the level of physical modification that arnold or lou had in the 1970s, since that type of modification actually adversely effects athletic performance. To any athletes those guys would have been way over the top. Given their excessive use for extended period of their lives, beyond that of even a football player, you should see the adverse side effects kicking in any time now, since both are close to the average age that american men die. Obviously huge amounts of roids over a decade or more have not adversely impaired their life styles. Maybe if they die in the next 5 years they will have had an early death, by like 5 years.

Bear in mind Arnie has had a bypass. Was that solely down to the cigars?

I Don't think so!

OK, ok, ok now honestly how do these people wipe when they are done on the toilet?

My question is, why do we worry about what other people put in their bodies?

The sanctity of a sport? no matter how much the people who play it get paid, it is still just a game, doesn't matter if it is a high school race or the Olympics.

We live in a country where our Congress calls hearings for steroid use in baseball but still don't have an energy policy. We all should start worrying about things that actually matter.

The fact is most people are not competant enough, and know it, to understand, let alone make even somewhat informed decisions regarding issues like energy policy, health care, labor, fair trade, etc.. Congress gets pressure to resolve these issues, but we elect people based on popularity not competance, so the congress is usually less competant then the general public (however, they do have a vote for sale to the right bidder). Thus when being lead by the dumbest guy in the room, he is going to be advised, by the special interests, to sidetrack the public on to some simple frivolous topic that is easy to create the appearance of doing something, a distraction.

Hmmmm, give me some of that potion. I want to make my balls decrease in size and start to look like a caveman (ridge across the forehead). Look, 'roids aren't for everyone. I wouldn't take them. I even balk at the thought of giving Ferris jr his rx's if the perscribe a steroid ( the dr. knows now to give a different medication for his asthma), not the same I know but a steroid just the same.

My trainer used to tell me that in the 40's and 50's even the early 60's steroids usage was MINIMAL they might use 'roids to help get ripped but that is it. Arnold was a 'roid user and he started in the 60's. An apprentice of mine told me that he used to get shots of roids when he was younger ("look out man," Omar told me," 'those roid rages were horendous." I kind of wonder if it might be something akin to those people who are never skinny enough (anorexic, bulemic), pretty enough (constant plastic surgery) or something along those lines. Of course, you have to have the genetics to get big, the needle will do the rest .

Needles do not scare me. No, I definitely wouldn't put anything in my body to give any sort of advantage. Well, except for proper nutrition... and what was it that Mark Spitz used to help him win in the 70's? A soda and a candy bar that is the advantage that would be really cool to hear about.

It does not matter to me what other people put into their bods, just it gives the wrong, wrong, wrong message to our kids. I mean, look at this whole lame scandal going on with Barry Bonds and the rest of the goof balls in baseball. A drug is still a drug no matter what it is that people call it and illegal is still illegal even if y our coach says that it is 'ok' for now.

How do you think that woman (Marion Joiner ?) feels now that she had to give up her medals? Probably feels like an idiot

Cheers