LITERACY LEGENDS:
Student name: Lincoln Newman-Beams
Student class: 9A
What can you tell us about this piece of work?
This is a persuasive essay about the use of performance enhancing drugs and why it is wrong to use them.
What is your favourite thing about English?
My favourite thing about English is doing vocabulary work because I can learn more high modality words to use in my next piece of writing.
What are you working on at the moment in English?
In English, we are currently doing group novel study work. The book we are reading is Lord of the Flies by William Golding
What are you reading at the moment?
The book I am currently reading is called the ‘The Toll’ by Neal Shusterman – the third and final book in the, ‘Arc of a Scythe’ series.
What is your favourite book and why?
My favourite book is ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Cline because of it's large use of pop culture references and the description used to paint a picture of a virtual world.
What are some books that you would really like to read?
A book I wouldn’t mind reading is ‘Enders Game’ by Orson Scott Card. I have seen the movie and would like to see how it compares to the book.
Is it wrong for elite athletes to take performance enhancing drugs?
It is absolutely disgraceful how many professional athletes use performance enhancing drugs in sport. It brings an unfair advantage to other teams and countries, it’s extremely unhealthy for your body and can ruin your sporting career. Doping is unfair, unsafe and undeniably unnecessary.
Doping is ridiculously hard on the body and can even be life threatening. Drugs like HGH (Human Growth Hormone), more popularly used in cycling cause heart diseases, strokes and blood clotting in the brain and lungs. Who would want that running through their blood stream? Another commonly used PED is steroids. They are used to preserve muscle mass. Even though they can produce a 5-20% strength increase, steroids have deadly side effects. They can cause kidney failure, liver damage, high blood pressure, an extremely high cholesterol and increased blood clots. Just because you take these drugs doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed an increase in performance.
Bryan Fogel, an amateur cyclist, was inspired by Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France doping scandals and decided to follow his footsteps by filming a documentary call “lcarus”. This is about Bryan Fogel trying to cheat the anti-doping system to see if he improves at cycling with the performance enhancing drugs. In his first race (Haute route) he placed 14th. He then (with help from Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov) took HGH, testosterone, EPO, thyroid hormones and HCG (a weight loss hormone). After taking these drugs, Bryan expected a vast performance but instead came 27th. This means that drugs don’t always work and you’re putting your body at risk for no reason.
Another reason why Performance Enhancing Drugs ruin sport is that they completely wreck athlete’s careers. For example, in the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, 43 Russian athletes tested positive to PEDs. This was found out 3 years after the scandal. As punishment, Russia was stripped of their 13 Olympic medals and were banned from the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Only a select few clean Russian athletes could compete, but under the Olympic Flag, not the Russian Flag. Lance Armstrong’s career was also destroyed after being caught cheating. After winning 7 Tour de France titles, he was found guilty of taking HgH, EPO and other PEDs. For this conspiracy, Lance was banned from all sports that follow the code and had to forfeit all awards and prizes won after August 1st 1998 which included his 7 Tour de France titles. Some people will do anything to win. People like Lance Armstrong and Russia go too far. Drugs may benefit for the athletes but it is horrible for the sport.
We all know that it’s completely wrong for elite athletes to take Performance Enhancing Drugs. A reason that supports this is it brings an unfair advantage to all sports where doping is involved. The whole reason of sport is to be entertained non-stop and you are not knowing who wins until right at the end. There is absolutely no point in watching sport if drugs are involved because the athletes doping make it better odds on them winning which makes all the games fixed. A way to fix this is for all the athletes to take Performance Enhancing Drugs. This would make it more eve and unpredictable for who would win. It would also make the sport much more exhilarating to watch for there is a higher skill level in the players due to the consumption of PEDs. But knowing the greediness of athletes who will do anything to win, they will take more PEDs so they still have a better performance increase than other elite athletes, which means we are back to where we started.
In conclusion, it is absurd how many athletes take performance-enhancing drugs. They are life ending supplements, they ruin your sporting career and make sports fixed and dull. If we continue to allow athletes to do as they please then the consequences will be catastrophic.
By Lincoln Newman-Beams
References
Armstrong is the dirtiest cheater in sport history, visited 20/7/20, last updated 2020,
Bibliography
Certified Fraud Examiners Last updated – 2020.
https://www.fraud-magazine.com/cover-article.aspx?id=4295002404
Icarus, 2018, Netflix documentary, Fogel, Bryan