Play fair and no one will doubt your accomplishments.
Ethics in Sports
As in one's every day life and professional career or trade, ethics should always play an important role in sports too. Whether you are a professional athlete, training to be the next superstar or an amateur, you should say no to steroid use and the use of any other banned performance enhancing drugs. By eating properly, possibly supplementing your diet with natural supplements, getting enough sleep and following your exercise workout program, you can achieve your goals no matter what level you are or what sport or athletic activity you wish to be the best at.
We know that steroid use and cheating in sports has been going on for decades. Athletes will try by every means to outperform their competitors. Even today with all the fairly stringent testing going on, they still try to defy the odds that they will not be caught! Eventually they still get caught because we still hear about athletes being caught for using illegal substance use, from baseball to the Summer and winter Olympics and the Common Wealth Games where even a 17 year old got caught. Who knows how many years this athlete has been taking illegal substances and at what age this athlete started. It makes me wonder, what adult trainer in their right mind would give a kid a banned substance to enhance their performance, give them an unfair edge?
In all sports and sporting events when everyone plays fair, in the end, everyone wins!
Being on steroids and other illegal performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) can have a negative effect on your long-term health and especially puts into question all your prior achievements. Let’s look at these two issues in more detail.
Questions Your Past Achievements
All your achievements in sport prior to and up to the time you have been caught or admitted to using steroids and PEDs will come into question and it will cast a black-eye on your reputation. Just look at baseball. In January 2013 there were no inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame even though the list of candidates put up impressive numbers during their careers! Do you think banned performance enhancing drugs had something to do with it? There are still several great baseball players who had amazing careers but because of doubt regarding PED use, they are not being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame - the crowning achievement to their careers, denied! Look at cycling too and in particular Lance Armstrong. Worst of all, you can be suspended or banned from a sport thus derailing your career or losing all your accomplishments. We see that all the time in the Olympics when athletes lose their medals and it continues till today in 2023.
Let’s look at baseball still in more detail (just my POV) since I am very familiar with that sport. The same of course applies to football, bodybuilding, especially the Olympics and many other sports.
I am not going to name names of all the baseball players who have admitted to using steroids, those who have been caught or those who are still in denial that they were on the juice. Considering that they broke all sorts of home run records, pitching and other baseball records, it makes me wonder, how many home runs would they have hit without artificial aid or what their batting average, number of hits, ERA would really have been if they played fairly? Will it eventually cost them a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame or being banned from the sport? Perhaps without the use of steroids, their careers would still have been very successful but not as successful as with being on the juice. To be a baseball player, on PEDs or PED-free, you still need to be very talented and put in a lot of hard training and work. So a lot of doubt and questions are often cast on successful athletes who dope up. Do you want such a black cloud to hang over your name for the rest of your life? Do you want fans, your peers and the press to forever question your achievements?
My answer is simple, it is best to play fair. You then know you didn’t cheat and what you have accomplished is done using your own talent and accomplished with hard, honest work.
Negative Effects on Health
In the short term steroids and PEDs may not have an affect on your health, but in the long-term they will affect your health BIG TIME - negatively and adversely. Perhaps in ways we do not know yet. Only a study of long-term steroid users could answer this question. I have heard it could cause liver and kidney damage, but how about cancers and mental problems? So are you willing to take the chance for short-term gain when it can affect your long-term health and well-being. Again it’s best to take the natural and honest approach to training for any athletic performance.
Also, providing young people who are still growing with steroids and banned PEDs is wrong ethically. It seems, it happens a lot in sport still - the Russian figure skater in the Winter Olynpics. It makes one wonder why any adult would even think of doing this!
Conclusion
Taking any sort of a banned substance to boost your athletic performance is wrong ethically, can put into question all your past performances and achievements, ban you from your sport for life and worst of all, affect your long-term health. So for athletes and budding superstars, no matter what age, it’s best to say NO to steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Hard, honest work will get you further and you will feel proud of your true accomplishments.
