Renato Canova wrote:
I think we have to divide athletes in two big categories : who looks mainly for money, and not only accepts, but searches, every way for reaching top results (for producing more money), and who wants to test himself, understanding till where can arrive with his own forces and qualities.
In spite of what the most of part of people can suppose, there are many (if not the most part) of top runners who belong to the second category, and who are able to stay at the top (also achieving some WR) without using any type of external aid (and I don't speak of doping only, but of legal supplements too).
We have in every sport some lack of specific education about the effects of different types of doping.
We need to think of severa points :
a) The business of Pharma Companies is the third in the World, and includes not only real medicines for sick people, but also every kind of supplement, because the global market pushes in this direction
b) We live in a "pharmacological society". In every TV (and in every Country), on every newspaper (and in every Country), in common discussions (and in every Country), normal people look for something helping their health, or able to produce a "magic" improvement of their personal qualities, under physical and mental point of view.
c) Underlining the effects of some substance on specific performances, produces the result to increase the market of the same substance, since the big income for the pharma Companies is in the market for amateurs and normal people, not with top athletes representing a very little percentage, but considered TESTIMONIAL of the effects on the performances.
d) On the other side, antidoping is now a flag for all the Olympic Sport. While the economical sources for the "poor" sports (athletics, swimming, wrestling, lifting, etc...), normally depending on the Investments of national Governments, or by the support of private sponsors (Banks, TV...), during the last 10 years, face a great cut year after year, the Antidoping continues to ask more money, moving the focus of sport from the ACTIVITY (that is something positive for every culture) to the CONTROL.
I read some time ago one post (maybe your, I don't remember) where the poster said the only way for cleaning the sport is to go back to full amateurialism, cancelling all prizes and advantages for top results.
I disagree : with the current culture, people takes some doping also for beating another athlete (maybe working in the same office), and the final goal is not money, but the satisfaction to be better than somebody else (in Italy, 99.50% of people using doping are not athletes, but are in the gyms for private activity).
It's clear that the only solution is a very deep EDUCATIVE ROAD, and at the base of everything there are two different goals :
a) To teach everybody that the higher satisfaction in any sport is TO IMPROVE YOURSELF, and if you take some external substance for helping yourself, but you have clear that goal, YOU GO TO CHEAT YOURSELF.
b) To make LESS IMPORTANT (looking at the final results) the advantages of doping, because, if we go to exaggerate the effects on the performances, WE BECOME THE BEST TESTIMONIAL FOR DOPING.
c) To reduce the list of substances able to give real advantages, and to create a difference in the period of ban depending on the substance, introducing the concept of DOSAGE and QUANTITY, too. At the moment, the list of substances is so long, including also something NEVER really tested, that people without a pool of specialists working with them are confused, and many positive tests are casual (especially when we find little percentage of steroids, present in the most part of medicines made in Asia, mostly in India, Vietnam and Korea).