I was watching this year’s Olympic women’s figure skating when I saw a 15 year old named Kamila Valieva skating. She was incredible, but a couple days later she had a positive drug test come back for a drug called trimetazidine, which is a heart medication which helps your body use oxygen. I was shocked that she was still able to compete even though the drug was still in her system. She had a huge advantage throughout the whole Olympics that the other skaters didn’t have.

When an athlete decides to take steroids and doesn’t get caught it causes huge advantages which clearly isn’t fair. Some of these advantages according to NIH.com are faster recovery time from an injury, increasing body recovery capacity after training, increasing muscle mass and strength, decreasing fat tissue, and increasing endurance. 

According to CleanCompetition.org their studies have shown that doping can increase your performance up to 10%.

 One of the most popular cases of this happening is with Barry Bonds. Bonds has been caught doping multiple times from the years 2001 through 2006, including injectable anabolic steroids, injectable human growth hormone, post cycle therapy drugs, and amphetamines and still wasn’t banned. 

He did get punished but his punishment was two years of probation, 250 hours of community service, a $4,000 fine and 30 days of home confinement. 

Professional sports are somewhat heading in the right direction when it comes to punishing athletes for doping but the punishment that Bonds was given here was terrible. He did not get caught doping once or twice; he was caught multiple times and the MLB still did not permanently ban him. 

This doesn’t just affect him, it affects everyone else in the sport. If a pitcher is pitching versus Bonds who was doping at the time and gives up a home run, that can really affect the pitcher’s whole career because maybe that homerun cost that pitcher not to get another contract.

  Bonds had career earnings of $188 million so what is $4,000 going to do. 

Now Bonds is the all time leader in home runs and nobody is catching up to him anytime soon.

There are a lot of cases of this happening throughout sports right now and it’s only going to get worse unless there are stricter rules in place. There needs to be a rule in place about banning athletes for doping. Athletes would definitely not dope if this rule was enforced because it can ruin their careers. 

All professional sports commissioners need to ban all use of steroids so their associations can be fair and competitive. 

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