It's quite common to look at a high-level athlete as a hero, even because the sports television media often treats him that way. For this Brazilian media, the athlete is a hero because in general he is underpaid, because the training is very rigorous and because he represents our country. And he is even more of a hero when he is poor at the beginning of his career, and this is an important fact: in a country guided by a liberal ideology, based on the winner principle, the loser has no place. And a lower-class person who succeeds in life by his own effort, to the point of representing his country, is dressed with honors and fatally recognized as a heroine.
The fact that many athletes have been awarded the hero's noble mantle and then been caught in drug testing often shocks the public. Shocking, because a self-respecting hero would be a champion by nature, without needing chemical help. Some cases of doping in sports have become quite famous, as is the case of Ben Johnson, who had his gold medal defeated at the Seoul Olympic Games, and the American Marion Jones, who won five medals in Sydney.
It is not the case here to discuss whether the athletes actually ingested substances not allowed by the committee or whether it was a mistake. Does not matter. What matters is that the athlete is a human being who seeks to overcome his body on a daily basis, and as such, he sometimes finds in doping a way to remain at the peak of his sport. In any case, it is necessary to understand what doping is. Well, doping is any change, encouraged by unnatural means, that occurs in the body's functioning in order to improve performance in a given physical activity. Contrary to what it seems, doping is not a modern practice: since 2000 a. C., the Chinese already used substances that, when chewed, had a stimulating effect and, later, in the ancient Olympics, it was The use among athletes of a miscellany of plants, whose main ingredient was a mushroom, is common. hallucinogens. Perhaps the most shocking doping case occurred in the former East Germany between the decades of 1970 and 1980: the athletes got pregnant so that they arrived at the competition pregnant from two to three months. During this period, the woman's body naturally increases its hemoglobin level, causing it to increase its aerobic capacity. After the race, the athletes went through abortions and returned to their training.
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However, it was before that, in the 1960s, that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) together with UNESCO initiated a systematized program to combat doping, drawing up appropriate legislation and, consequently, also punishments appropriate. In general, doping is usually classified into three different types:
1. Pre-competitive doping is that which tends to prepare the athlete for competition. The most used are diuretics, blood transfusions, anabolic steroids and growth hormone;
2. Doping during competition: These are substances that, when assimilated in moments close to competition, improve the athlete's performance. They are: tranquilizers, stimulants and analgesics.
3. Post-competitive doping: Diuretics are widely used in this case, the reasons for which may be rapid weight loss or elimination of ingestion of another type of competitive doping or pre-competitive.
Combating doping has a problem: that the technology of doping an athlete is always ahead of his detection system. This leads us to think that many athletes we see as heroes are human. Humans to the point of opting for the use of doping to achieve and maintain their reign. Has the human body not already reached its limit?
By Paula Rondinelli
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Physical Education from the São Paulo State University “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” – UNESP
Master in Motricity Sciences from the São Paulo State University “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” – UNESP
Doctoral Student in Integration of Latin America at the University of São Paulo - USP
drugs - Brazil School
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
RONDINELLI, Paula. "Doping and the Hero Myth"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/drogas/dopagem.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
