Ask anyone with a decent knowledge of sports and current events, and they will tell you: doping in sport is a problem. Nearly every week, another high-profile doping story makes its way to the headlines of newspapers around the world. A quick Google News search for “doping” revealed over 7,500 results from the past week alone. The stories ranged from the lesser known 2 Youth Olympic Games Wrestlers who were recently suspended to the more famous 2010 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador’s positive test.
Earlier this month, Brent Musburger (an ABC/ESPN sports commentator) told a group of students at University of Montana that steroids work. Musburger blamed “journalism youngsters” who “got too deeply involved in something they didn’t know too much about” for the negative image steroids and doping now have. He went on to say that steroids had no place in high school, but “under the proper care and doctor’s advice, they could be used at the professional level.” (Quotes take from the Missoulian article.)
If you know me (or have been in a class with me), you know how I feel about doping in sports. In fact, anti-doping was one of the reasons I came to law school, and more specifically to Marquette. My view is that doping has no place in sport. The story of how I came to become so staunchly against doping is for another day (and perhaps a different venue), but basically involves my love for the sport of cycling and the systematic doping that plagues that sport. Suffice it to say that I take a firm stance against doping in all sports in all forms.