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Performance Enhancing Drugs

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We live in a world where winning is seemingly everything. Competition rules our lives from the sports we play to the test scores we earn. Everyday, we are pushed to be the best and winning is seen as the way to prove we are the best. Winning the championship game, receiving a one-hundred percent on a test, or getting into a prestigious college are just some examples of these manifestations of success. While competition does breed innovation and growth, it can sometimes go too far. In regards to cycling, it can push competitors to become involved in illegal and immoral actions such as taking performance enhancing drugs in order to win. However, taking performance enhancing drugs is banned for a reason; sports should be about showcasing natural …show more content…

Rules are put into place so that they will be followed; it creates a system where everyone is on an equal playing field and are only allowed to use natural abilities. However, performance-enhancing drugs dirty the waters. It creates a system in which people cannot trust in because they do not know who is and is not cheating. This seemed to happen with cycling when all of the evidence about taking drugs came out. An overall distrust from the public ensued and reflected legitimacy being taken away from the sport of cycling. Cyclists earned a bad name as cheaters even if they were natural and were looked down upon by the general public. Thus, this fiasco hurts the sport as well as the innocent individuals who were trying to play by the rules.
One might disagree and state we are all inherently unequal. This is actually beneficial because if we were all the same, there would be no excitement or competition. With differences, there is a wide variety of talents and skills and we can use our own unique adaptations to our advantage. For example, basketball has many different positions because of the height and skills of the players. Point guards have good long range and ball handling skills, while centers are crafty in the post and are incredibly tall. This is what makes sports so exciting to

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