Are we fighting a losing battle trying to stop athletes taking performance enhancing drugs? Is cheating just so much a part of “our” collective genetic makeup that it can never be eradicated from sport? Is the only option to throw more money at it, and make the offenders criminals and put them in prison, or is there an alternative, albeit extreme option?
What if we went the other direction, and did a 180, and created an entirely new “genre” in the sports world, where it would be not only legal to take PEDs, but you would actually be encouraged to take them?
We have the Olympic and Paralympic Games for abled and disabled athletes. Why not add another section for enabled and enhanced athletes? Creating Super-Olympics would give those individual athletes and state sponsored programs that want to cheat a stage and an outlet. Could this be the solution? Maybe, just maybe, these “cheats”, be it individuals or statewide programs, would then self-purge themselves and move to the new platform, a sand box created especially for them, where they could go and play. Then the decks would be cleared and our current system could be cleaned up. (more…)