Usage of Steroids at the Olympics
January 28th, 2009 Posted by: admin
The researches pertaining to usage of steroids has shown that as many as 2% of potential athletes with ages between 10 & 14 can obtain and are using steroids. To the extent of more than 5-10% of high school athletes have been using steroids even as this figure in the context of athletes in colleges stands at around 5%. These young athletes buy steroids despite the fact that all these substances have been classified as class III drugs and are prohibited by law.
Governmental and legal bottlenecks have acted for suppressive attempts in order to ascertain the definite number of professionals & Olympic athletes who buy steroids use them. However, there are a few athletes, some of whom have won gold medals at the Olympics, whose medals have been cancelled and taken back and they have been handed long term or life time bans from the sports they were playing.
The two most prominent of such incidences have been those of sprinters Marion Jones & Ben Johnson. Johnson, who was a Canadian sprinter, was stripped off his 100m gold medal which he won in the Seoul Olympics in 1988 whereas Jones was stripped off the team & the individual honors that she had got at the Athens Olympics in 2004.
Usage of these steroids for the purpose of augmenting athletic abilities has been described as an unethical practice & is firmly banned by the International Olympics Association.
