Steroids

Steroids

...They are not just for Science or Entertainment anymore. The Nazis experimented with steroids in their effort to build the perfect man. The Russians and the East Germans used them to win Olympic medals. Then they must be evil, right?

Let’s take a step back and look at athletics in general. What is the point of athletics? The ancient Greeks created athletics in an effort to prevent war. They brought many of the city-states together in order to compete with each other so they wouldn’t feel the need to kill one another. The victory in athletics could be substituted for a victory in battle. Superiority no longer depended on death, but on the affirmation of life. The most powerful athletes were victorious.

When archeologists re-discovered the ancient Greek Olympics society was re-discovering athletics in general. Before the late 1800s athletics was a diversion from extremely long work works. People played games to relax. They would never contemplate athletics for the sake of athletics alone. Athletics became a more regular activity among people who could afford to dedicate the extra time to their sport.

Under these circumstances people who had money and loved a sport could play it enough to become very good at it. They more time you had the better you were at your sport. So, winning in sports was a way to display your free time, a symbol of your wealth. At the same time professional sports began to appear. The wealthy that were not in physical shape also wanted to demonstrate their wealth. They did this by created professional teams. The more money that they had the better athletes they could afford, and hence the better the team would be.

This is the way it was until to 1960s. In the cold war the Olympics became a way to demonstrate to the world the superiority of your country. The Soviet block wanted to show how strong the Soviet countries were, so they could claim that their system produced strength. The battle was to win over smaller countries to their way of government. The United States pushed the idea of capitalism, but they also helped sponsor athletes so that our country could prevail over the Soviet block countries. During these years winning became political. Both sides used steroids in an effort to win and show strength. So, we were back to the athletics as an outlet instead of war. Both sides made efforts to retain their advantage.

But, the reality of athletics is that some people are more athletic than others. Why is this? This is because some people produce more natural steroids than other people do. Women produce fewer steroids on average than men do. So, if all things are equal, then the person who has built up more muscle because his/her body produces more natural steroids than the other will win the strength events. So, the strength events are measuring who was born with the ability to develop the most strength. This seems to be a strange thing to be proud about. It is just as bad as a beauty contest. In a beauty contest contestants need to practice walking, controlling their calorie intake, and their manners. In athletics athletes need to practice to build their muscles and develop the skills required for the sport.

So, when a person takes steroids he/she is in essence leveling the playing field. Someone who isn’t born with enough natural steroids takes supplements to get him up to the level of the guy who produces more natural steroids. What difference does it make? Either way the athletes are freaks of human nature. They are the far end of the spectrum in the strength category. Steroids just allow the less freaky people to become athletic freaks. What difference does it make, because the people paying to see these athletes are paying to see athletic freaks do something the normal person could only wish he/she could do?

So, in the long run in professional sports it really doesn’t matter if an athlete takes steroids. This is because people pay to see freaks play sports and the freakier that they are the more money they will pay.