Positive Drug Tests in sport.

What sort of idiot trains hard for months or even years then:

1. Takes performance enhancing or social drugs before, during or after competition?
2. Takes performance enhancing or social drugs at any time?

That’s just it: they are idiots. Well most of them are anyway. Some are misguided. Some are lazy. Some just made a genuine mistake.

Positive Drug Tests in Sport: 6 Types of Drug Cheats and How to Recognise them.

6 Different Types of Drug Cheats:

There are drug cheats in sport and there are drug cheats in sport.

When any athlete tests positive to a drug test, the first thing people will do is to try to answer the reason “why”.

There are 6 clearly different reasons why athletes return a positive drug test: 6 different types of athletes who are labelled Drug Cheats:

 

Drug Cheat Number 1: The Total Idiot Athlete.

Total idiots are the worst kind of drug cheats in sport. They took performance enhancing drugs fully aware of the consequences and not only that, they are so stupid that they couldn’t even get taking the drugs right – i.e. they got caught.

To all you idiots out there, please stop playing sport. Your involvement in sport is offensive to every hard working, passionate, committed, “non-drug taking” athlete. It is because of you that every breakthrough performance that comes along is treated with suspicion rather than jubilation.

Go find a very high cliff and try base jumping without a parachute.

  

Drug Cheat Number 2: The Unlucky Athlete. These drug cheats miscalculated with their medications or they got bad medical advice or some other genuine piece of bad fortune.

We can forgive the unlucky ones.

  

Drug Cheat Number 3 : The Gullible Athlete. These drug cheats listened to some sales clerk at the local Health Food store who recently got a sports nutrition diploma off the back of a Cereal box and who now feel fully qualified to give quality nutrition information to everyone.

We can excuse the gullible ones.

 

Drug Cheat Number 4: The Athlete who made a genuine mistake. In spite of the tens of millions of dollars spent around the world each year to educate athletes, coaches, sports administrators and officials about doping in sport, these drug cheats just made a genuine error: hard to believe it but they did.

We can overlook the ones who made a genuine mistake – “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and all that…..we’ve all made mistakes.

 

Drug Cheat Number 5: The really lazy Athlete. Drug cheat number fives are those who made an admin error or did not submit their exemption form or forgot to tell the appropriate authorities about their latest training locations or some other similar piece of laziness.

We can even allow the lazy ones a bit of flexibility.

 

Drug Cheat Number 6: The “Had No Choice” Athlete. Let’s hope there are not too many of these athletes in the world any more but it is a matter of public record that many athletes who were part of the old East German and Russian sports machines were forced to take performance enhancing drugs against their wills.

We must find some sympathy for these athletes.

But to the idiots – the ones who knowingly, deliberately and with conscious choice took performance enhancing drugs with the aim of cheating, we can not allow any forgiveness, any excuses, any overlooking, any flexibility: nor can we give them any sympathy.

The Idiots Have Ruined Sport for All of Us:

Let’s face it, these idiots have ruined sport. They-have-ruined-sport.

If some incredibly talented athlete smashes the world standard or breaks some long standing “unbeatable” record or does something that no one has done or seen before, what’s the first word that comes into your head?

Amazing?

Brilliant?

Astounding?

No. No and No.

The first word you think of is “Drugs”. Or maybe “Cheat”.

We have gone from thinking, “Wow – I wonder what sort of training he does” or “Gee – you’ve got to admire how much time she must have spent working hard in the gym” to thinking “I wonder what he’s taking”.

And for that reason and that reason more than any other, all the idiots – the athletes who test positive for knowingly and willingly taking performance enhancing drugs should have a life ban imposed on them.

Sport should be about all that’s good in the human condition: achievement, values, commitment, passion, team-work, skills, over-coming adversity, perseverance, striving to be all you can be, making the most of your opportunities and so on.

Because of the idiots, chemistry has become more important than coaching, tablets more important than training and hiding cheating more important than high performance.

Time to get Serious:

How ’bout we all get serious about this?

Forget the slap on the wrist – it’s out for life. Do the crime – do the time.

Refuse to accept the lies: “I am not sure but I think someone must have slipped something in my drink” or “I must have eaten too much ham from pigs who ate a lot of steroid enriched food” – what rubbish.

Send WADA an email right now and tell them what you think. Let’s all get a little (or a lot) mad and do all we can to stop drug cheating in sport!

Support the WAT-IFS campaign: the “World’s Athletes Trying for Idiot Free Sport” today!!

Wayne Goldsmith