A Doping Cheat’s Entire Olympic Team Should Be Stripped Of Their Medals

An Athlete should not have to choose between his life and Olympic Glory. If doping is not harshly punished, it can come down to deciding between your life and health or beating the competition.

Athletes should not be able to get an advantage out of something that will surely harm them. In Boxing, you can be banned for life for using plaster of paris bandages under your gloves. This is because it both harms both your opponent and your own hand. [[http://bit.ly/n17k59]] So you cannot enhance your performance by sacrificing your health. Suicide should not be permitted as a winning strategy. As we have said, sports should be about human beings achieving their potential of strength and speed while maintaining their health. It is a mandate for the Olympic Committee to minimize health risks. When Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luger competing for Georgia died in a Olympic training run, the Olympic Committee inmediately did the following Comittee Report

1. Increase the height of the outside wall (sliders left side) by 2.26 meters for a distance of 18 meters.
2. Addition of a 1 meter high wall on the outside wall (sliders left) for a distance of 10 meters from the end of the current wall.
3. Increasing the height of the inside wall (sliders right) by 40cm for a distance of 46 meters.
4. Squaring off the curve of the ice between the base of the track and the side walls of the outrun..
[[http://bit.ly/dnQ601]] This is why even in a sport where your opponent is supposed to hit you, there are regulations that punish certain punches, for example to your genitals. The idea is that you can both be a boxer and have kids. Hockey rules have changed to reflect the need to protect players by “now making any hit to the head — where the head is the principal point of contact — illegal” [[http://bit.ly/kThCOT]] We believe this is a good thing. Harshly punishing teams communicates doping is not condoned and that the rules of the game will be changed to make it a very risky vent

Sports are one of the most universal cultural expressions, they have been so at least since the times of ancient Greece and they bring together people from all over the world to show off the results of their efforts in an environment of healthy competition.

Like all other cultural expressions, mankind has steadily civilized sports: banning tactics that deliberately cause injury or harm to other athletes, using more referees so they can monitor competitions better, among many others. The institutions behind these measures are regulatory bodies, who must ensure that any given sport does not decrease its safety levels over time. The best way to do this is by setting minimum standards everybody must comply with, especially those athletes or teams willing to resort to tactics that sacrifice their own long-term health so they can have an edge over the rest of the competitors.

If regulatory bodies did not do this, sports could degenerate as athletes engage in a “race to the bottom”. Those who are desperate to win, would voluntarily start putting themselves in harms way by using performance-enhancing, yet health-endangering drugs in order to beat their competition. If they are allowed to succeed by choosing medals over health, then any competitor athlete wanting to win as well would be forced to choose between losing the competition or losing his own health. Thus, the consumption of these substances would go from voluntary to necessary. This would serve as a deterrent for healthy people to practice sports competitively so they can stay healthy, thus disenfranchising the people willing to keep sports clean and setting an horrible example for generations to follow.

In the end everybody loses: all athletes would end up using drugs -and suffering the health drawbacks- without gaining any real edge over their competitors.

Historically, some athletes have decided to get an edge against their competition by utilizing illegal substances or have been negatively influences to do so by their social network, trainers, teammates or peer pressure. This goes against the maxim of what healthy competition represents.Council of Europe in the Code of Sports Ethics

The potential benefits to society and to the individual from sport will only be maximised where fair play is centre stage.

The truth is that whenever doping is discussed the debate is centered around why do athletes fall into the temptation that banned substances represent, but the main reasons why athletes do not cheat are rarely mentioned. Fact is that the main reason athletes choose not to cheat is the risk of being caught, so this leads to the argument that the risk of cheating has to be so big and the consequences so harsh that more athletes will choose to remain clean.

Sociologist Howard S.Becker published a classic work in 1963 called Outsiders which illustrates that athletes’ main reasons to avoid taking illegal substances hardly ever relate to moral standards or health issues, though they may factor in the decision.
The reason for not doping back when the study was made that was given repeatedly was the fear that it would be socially excluding; that it would ruin the athlete’s reputation if he or she were caught.

The best way to illustrate how the larger risk represented through the removal of all medals to an Olympic Team will further deter the use of banned substances will be to analyze the situation from a trainer’s point of view. In most cases, athletes are either recommended to use the substances by their trainers or at least the trainer is aware of the use of said substances. So, if a trainer knows than one of his athlete’s does not stand a chance to win, he may support the use of banned substances. However, if that athlete’s decision could hurt the entire team, he would prevent it from happening.

We believe individual sanctions are not working. Sanctioning the whole team will substantially improve the status quo. Today, tests are done randomly or in cases of suspicion (i.e. when records are broken), so for athletes that choose to use prohibited substances the worst-case scenario is to get caught and bear the responsibility of their actions themselves. But if we increase the cost of getting caught by punishing their olympic team, the individual athletes who used to use these substances would have to face harsher consequences both for themselves and their team if he/she is caught. They will have to face condemmnation by the team, probably have fights with their teammates, and the fact that they ruined the team’s performance will give them a huge burden to carry throughout their entire life and will negatively effect their reputation with the fans.

For instance, if a soccer player during a match is tempted to commit a gross foul during the game, and he knows he could be expelled for such an action, maybe he would not mind doing so, if for him it is not a big deal to stop playing. But since expulsion means the team will play with 10 players instead of 11, he knows such an action would bring a negative effect for the whole team, so this pressures him into being more careful not to break the rules, because his actions could punish the whole team. Therefore, teammates will be angry at the individual who committed the gross foul and would blame him for the problems he created for the entire team.

So, this policy creates peer pressure. Athletes working within a team, will want their teammates to behave properly and not to consume prohibited substances. If those who do not use drugs did not care in the past about whether or not their teammates used drugs or not because that was “their own business”, will now be forced to care since they could be affected. So now everyone is pressing drug-users to stop consuming them, because now it is everyone’s business.

It’s important to understand the role of the non doping members of the team: We oppose the notion that they are all innocent in the SQ of doping. Opp wants us to believe that if you don’t do it you probably don’t know anything about it. But you can be an accomplice both by action or by omission) to the cheating. You can know but keep the secret, even be in favor of the doping but choose not to do it. You’re an enabler. This kind of culture has been discovered from US’s to east German’s Olympic teams [[http://bit.ly/o21fN4]] where a organized cheating developed. As Carl Lewis said in 2000, admitting his own drug use:
 
Carl Lewis
“There is no commitment to stopping the drug problem. People know the sport is dirty, the sport is so driven by records.”

In these cases all that knew and didn’t say anything were in the wrong: the dopers, the team-mates and the coaches.

Wen you’re on a team, what can be considered just? No matter what you know or ignore, you shouldn’t by principle expect to benefit from anything but fair play from your team. Team sport athletes know that each of their contributions could help them win or cause them to loose. If one of their members is doped they can’t expect to win. Even in the case of individual sports,athletes in the Olympics go to represent a team and a nation, and they shouldn’t expect to be considered apart from them as they could at Wimbeldon.

Team-mates can be part of the solution. How does peer pressure fare against money and just wanting to win? Money is tempting, but you need the favor of your team in order to perform at all. If this policy is enacted and your team-mates see you are doping, you will have a hard time on practices and this will affect your performance. And you need this to win. We’re sure that Marion Jones has a rough time in sporting events today.

The clear role team mates would play in solving the problem for good dwarves the pain the elusive truly innocent individual sport team member could feel.

This debate centered around three clashes:

1• To paraphrase Seinfeld:
So… What’s the deal with doping?

Dear judge may be confused with what is the SQ according to Opp. They say:
That our model isn’t neccessary since the percentage of positive results is declining.

That “as seen in the past and in the present, cheating is inevitable”

That the commercial an popularity incentives to get doped are increasing like never before.

That “athletes are getting away without their dope-cheating penalised”

That athletes are finding even more ways to get doped and go undetected.

We denounced opps wanting to distort the evidence they presented: they didn’t show a decline but picked and chose the years that fitted their assertion. We said even if so we want it to be zero. But we gave evidence that it’s not declining and that amongst top performers it’s very common. If incentives are getting bigger and doping is not declining as a result we need to do something else to avoid the race to the bottom of the top athletes.

2• Will our model be effective?

We’ve shown it will. They completely ignored the coach and the calculation he’ll have to do about risk if our model is passed, as explained in our yes point #3. We spoke about the possible new interest of delegation heads to do internal tests in order to prevent their whole team from being stripped of medals. To this we added the peer (from team-mates) and social pressure from a whole country. We explained this will help change the culture inside teams. The athlete himself will have to decide not only to risk himself but his team-mates. Many won’t want to have that amount of “blood on their hands” if they are found out. Those who will risk it will have their team-mates and coaching watching in order to avoid it.

3 • Is our model justified?

Opp’s objections to stripping the team of their medals is their innocence. They even accepted part of our model! We answered their concern about careers being ruined by pointing out that dopers get suspensions and fines the teammates won’t. They will just not win medals, just like it would happen if they had been 4th or 5th.

We gave you a beautiful illustration of the friend that gives you stolen goods. Is not right for team mates to benefit from the cheaters performance and win medals, those are tainted. And second, that there are two groups of innocents at stake: the cheater’s teammates AND teams without doping members. One or the other is going to suffer the consequences of the cheaters action, we should side with the teams where none cheated. Also they aren’t there to represents themselves but their country. So they can’t expect to be considered individuals.

We also gave you the following analysis: even if the rare innocent, knows-nothing-athlete is affected somehow, the harm is smaller to that done to the other teams, country, sport, fans that got cheated out the medals, the fairness and the heroes. And smaller than the health harms we want to avoid

Opp arguments aren’t playing nice with one another. Rebutting Yes#4 they recognize the limitations of the current scope by saying that testing is “done randomly or in cases of suspicion”. AND in No#2 they admit there’s impunity with “Even if the inaccuracy is relatively low, it means that those low percentages of athletes are getting away without their dope-cheating penalised”. Yet their evidence in the answer to Yes#2 says that these weak testing regimen took Summer Olympics positive results from 1.4% (1976), 0.8% (1984), to 0.42% (2008) and Winter Olympics from 5.1% (1976) to 0.08 (2006). This is highly incompatible with the assertion they made here “as seen in the past and in the present, cheating is inevitable”, since by their own admission, this measure, while limited and ineffective, helped reduce the percentage of athletes using PED since the 70’s. Sadly it’s still there (is not 0%), and stronger measures need to be taken.

They also made a strong point out of incentives to cheat increasing due to the commercialization and popularity of the event. We contend that these increased temptations have to be matched with stronger disincentives than we have today so doping can be eradicated. Facing the ire of fans, colleagues and coaches is a strong blow for people wanting to be idols, and hurting the chances to win of their friends and teammates will give them emotional reasons to stay clean.

They argue that it’s unfair to strip people of “legally” acquired medals. First, in competitions like a relay race, if a member uses drugs, the entire team benefits from that performance so their medals are tainted. On the other hand, it is even less fair for a team with no cheaters to lose to a team of cheaters. It isn’t like failing a whole class because someone cheated on their test, it’s like failing a group essay if one of the members plagiarized part of the content, even if the other members weren’t aware or chose to ignore it.

The first part of the argument is thus responded: we don’t oposse more and better doping tests. Let’s test each and every athlete if possible. AND let’s use peer and social pressure to insure fewer people try it. Their example of Michael Phelps is easily crushed when you find that the “photo of him doping” was taken in 2009 [[http://on.today.com/q1Z9CL]] and the Olympics were in 2008 [[http://fxn.ws/nh0LN4]], so opp is saying either that the drugs that he consumed in 2009 affected him retroactively on 2008, or that he had been on a continuous doped state for months. In any case, the fact that some athletes might cheat without a consequence has no bearing that cheating has to be castigated first and foremost in order to greatly reduce the number of people that will chance it. We believe that after just the first incident of this policy being enforced as a agreed upon policy, the peer pressure will work as disincentive.

Of course its It is unfair some teams that do not get caught. But in the balance doping is dangerous and it’s unfair for ALL the teams that participate and don’t cheat, the fans, the IOC. Even if the policy could affect completely innocent team-mates (and many aren’t innocent as we explain in our 5th point) we think that possibility pales in comparison to the unfairness in the SQ where just one team member is justly punished but his team, country, fans might benefit from the medals.

Lastly, Opp seems to be saying that since some teams will get away with doping because of luck and some won’t, this policy shouldn’t be implemented. But the same risk present in the SQ but with individual punishment. This is like saying that since there are criminals and their collaborators that aren’t caught, then we shouldn’t prosecute anyone. We think once you have a couple of “unlucky teams” that get stripped of medals you’ll see a reduction of people trying their luck.

Opp is making some overbroad claims by saying “such harsh punishment potentially ruining an athlete’s career”, because stripping a medal isn’t any more damaging for an athlete’s career than not getting the medal in the first place (being 4th doesn’t ruin careers), it does cause sadness and dissapointment, eagerness to try again and a lot of sympathy from the public.

Opp complements this asserting that those teammates “get the same punishment as the athlete who has made the life changing decision”, but that’s not true. Marion Jones got her medals stripped AND a 2 years suspension[[http://lat.ms/pQSTH7]], her teammates only faced having their medals stripped (no suspension).

Then they remain rather inflexible by saying “Putting their team’s victory at risk to create ‘social pressure’ is not going to decrease motivation for an athlete to use dope”. Really? Not even a little bit? Not even in some cases? Sportspeople balance the odds of winning (thanks to dope) and its benefits vs the odds and consequences of being caught, and the health issues. Adding drawbacks that will make them infamous among their fans, colleagues and sport authorities is bound to be factored in; and hurting their friends and team members will be factored in too. Some athletes are willing to hurt themselves, less are willing to become infamous, and most will bark at the possibility of hurting others.

Marion Jones’ case, involved a relay race.So her teammates benefited from her performance and won medals. Her team-mate’s winning appeal doesn’t advance opps case: Their own evidence shows that the appeals court ruled that way because “rules in 2000 did not allow entire teams to be disqualified because of doping by one athlete”[[http://usat.ly/djqiUg]]. Those are the rules we want to change, because -as the court admitted- that kind of ruling is ‘unfair to relay teams that competed “with no doped athletes”‘. Opp hasn’t engaged us on this unfairness the court spoke about, that involves more

Apparently we have to explain yet again how it is fair to be stripped of your medals with another illustration:
A friend calls you and says: “My uncle died, left me everything in his apartment. Help me move the stuff out and I’ll give you some of it”. You go and work hard and then turns out your friend lied: he was stealing the stuff. You acted in good faith but is not rational to expect to be given your work’s worth. Still, you wont go to jail.The team mate wont be fined or such but cant take the proceeds of cheating.

A whole team can win just with one person’s contribution. Recently Venezuela lost the Copa America in the SF because of one missed penalty.

On Alernate participation: they’re on team but if they don’t participate in the game/race they won’t be tested/win medals. So no harm there.

We want to denounce they used their evidence deceitfully in their rebuttal of our race to the bottom point. As judge knows, when you compare the highest level of a series to another you will always conclude that a trend is downwards; even when this is wrong. They took 1976 (1.4%, the highest) and compared it to 2008 to conclude that there was no evidence of a race to the bottom. If you take another starting date (let’s say Barcelona 1992) you would see a significant increase. So, there’s no clear evidence that cheating has decreased in recent years or that it will decrease. Even more, if we look closer at the 20 suspended athletes in Beijing 2008, 6 were previous Olympic champions, world champions or finalists in the bigger events in their sports before 2008 (Moreno [[http://bit.ly/qlWAtv]], Halkia [[http://bbc.in/oNPMNa]], Alves [[http://bit.ly/r0Pfdz]], Pessoa [[http://bit.ly/qwI3kK]], Seroczynski [[http://bit.ly/nIOfUv]], Tsoumeleka [[http://es.pn/rnbV0i]]) and 5 actually got a medal before being DQ [[http://bit.ly/PgeMK]] so this comes to 11 out 20, which shows a race to the bottom between top performers or those who won in past.

We responded about Phelps as example previously but ok, IOC fails to detect some cases and that there are ways to get around tests. We support any measure to prevent failings. What makes team mates more able to know? The fact that they’re in the circle of trust of trainers and other team members. Also, apart from not knowing they might just be better at faking the test or benefit from a false positive.

But Opp keeps ignoring that we’re not relying solely on social pressure, we also said in yes #3: our measure will make unnacceptable for teams the risk of going to the olympics with doped athletes. In the past the the US olympic Committee hid tests results in order to allow dopers to go and earn medals. They had a good chance to win and in the worse case scenario the cheater got busted, and the consequences for the team were the same as if he hadn’t shown up AND someone else in the team could still win medals in that discipline. But, if we start stripping the entire team of medals, the incentives for the USOC will change: now the best thing for the delegation is making sure there aren’t any dopers in any team, so they don’t jeopardize their teammates chances, in order to do this Olimpic teams worlwide will have incentives to outsmart their athletes attemps to hide their doping, which will also increase the quelity of doping tests worldwide.

Yes, relays demand teamwork and cooperation. And the notion that either we all play clean or we all get stripped of medals works with this idea. What they describe as inspecting others is know as benign peer pressure and is a well known management technique.

Also, opp is surrendering the debate: “A team must be blamed and punished as a group only when the teammates were actually aware of the cheating”. They’re supposed to oppose every stripping of medals except for doping cheat.