Still Falling

When my generation was growing up, performance-enhancing substances weren’t a hot-button topic in sports news; they were hardly even a thing. Steroids existed, of course; basic steroids are a set of naturally-occurring substances, and medical research and use of anabolic steroids goes back to the 1930s, but such things weren’t widely available. We all heard stories of people who used speed to improve their performance in various activities, or even to stay awake for weeks at a time studying for exams, but most of us knew that your odds of being caught and disqualified, arrested, or simply dying from various drug-related complications outweighed any benefit you could get from the drugs. Even if we’d had access to them, nobody I knew had enough to gain through (possibly) higher performance to take those kinds of risks…

I’m not suggesting that those times were better than our modern world; far from it. On almost any dimension you’d care to name life is better now. But it is hard to deny that as the stakes have grown higher and the rewards have gone through the stratosphere, the pressure to perform has also risen exponentially and vendors have appeared to profit from the demand being generated (as vendors always do). Nor is there any sign of the cycle slowing down any time soon; as the demand for performance continues to rise, the money paid to top performers will rise with it, and the lengths that people are willing to go to in order to reap those rewards will continue to expand…

What remains unclear in these discussions is what we can, or even should, do about the problem. Some authorities will claim that the use of performance-enhancing substances is wrong, since it gives an unfair advantage to people who can afford them (or are willing to accept the risks), offends the spirit of the game (in a sports context, at least) and involves buying and selling of controlled substances and/or perjury (both felonies). Others will argue that there is risk inherent in almost any human pursuit, whether that means broken bones or torn muscles in athletic competition or dropping dead of a heart attack from spending too many hours working at a high-pressure job, and in any case, no one is being hurt by the occasional failures except the competitors themselves. Recent experience would appear to indicate that this isn’t always the case, however…

Consider, for example, the case of Nike dropping support for Lance Armstrong’s “Livestrong” charity, as reported this week on the News.com.au website. Nike quit sponsoring Armstrong himself last October, when his use of performance-enhancing drugs in competition was made public, but now the company is going to cut ties with the charity as well, which will eliminate one of the organization’s biggest sponsors – as well as the support that allowed Livestrong to promote and distribute its trademark yellow wristbands world-wide. It is possible that the charity group is large enough and well-funded enough to keep going without support from Nike, and it is possible that the company will donate the same amount of funding to other anti-cancer organizations, but neither of these things is certain – and anything that draws support or attention away from eradicating cancer is probably not a good thing…

The truth is that in our brave new world, where everything and everybody appear to be interconnected at all times, the consequences of our actions have grown right along with the personal risks and potential rewards – and there isn’t any sign of those cycles stopping anytime soon, either…