The Spirit of Sports?

Marion Jones, a former world champion track and field athlete, has won five medals in the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney Australia. In October 2007, Jones admitted taking steroids before the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. All her medals and prizes dating back to September 2000 were forfeited.

Tong Wen, a former champion Judo athlete, has won three times gold medal in the world Judo Championship and one gold medal in 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. She failed the drug test after the world Judo Championship 2009 in Holland and was banned for competition for two years. Her coach excuse is "She trained in Europe and was sick of the food so we gave her a lot of pork chops when she came home."

Performance-enhancing drugs are substances used by athletes to improve their performances in the sports. Not only these two, but also a lot of famous athletes used performance-enhancing drugs to get advantage in their games. Since there are only a few athletes who were reported using performance-enhancing drugs, most people believe that it is rare for athletes to use drugs. When I was discussing with one of my junior yesterday about Tong Wen's drug test failure, he was convinced by the news from Sina that it was because of pork chops. However, I didn't believe the story. I think she defiantly used drugs. It is because pork chop is a common dish in Holland, Germany, and Denmark and there is no drug test failure news from these countries' athletes recently. Plus she is the only one from China Judo team who failed the test, and it is not reasonable for a national team to serve food to their player separately. Although I was certain about her usage of drugs, at that point, I still didn't believe using drugs is a common act in competitive sports.

Last Sunday, my friend C and I went for a dinner at his coach Mr Wu's home. We had a dinner with Mr Wu, Mrs Wu, and LS who was a student of Mr Wu's friend. Mr Wu was a famous swimming athlete in Tianjin, he was the China national champion in 200 meters freestyle swimming. LS was a famous swimming athlete in Tianjin as well. She was the China national champion in 200 meters butterfly style swimming. Most Singaporeans may know Ms Tao Li very well, who is an immigrant from China and won many awards in swimming for Singapore. But comparing her with LS, the former China national champion, Tao Li is no match. LS could beat her easily. It was an honor for me to meet these champions face to face. At that night, we talked about several different topics, including Singapore politics, working culture, and the use of Performance-enhancing drugs.

Based on his 40 years experience in swimming, Mr Wu told us that performance-enhancing drugs are wildly used by athletes. There are varieties of drugs. He explained to us the two basic working principles of drugs. One principle is increasing the oxygen delivered in blood. Once there are more oxygen circulates in blood, human body can burn energy in a faster rate. It can be achieved by increasing the heme level in blood. A simple method is to draw large amount of one's own blood out before the competition, store it in a fridge, and inject it back to the body on the day before the competition. By using this method, the heme level in blood can be even doubled. The other principle is increasing androgenic hormone. There are numerous drugs for tuning androgenic hormone. They are mainly used by female athletes like Marion Jones.

LS also shared us her experience on using performance-enhancing drugs. She said almost everybody in competitive sports uses drugs. It is an open secret. There are people who failed drug test, because the drugs they used are not state-of-the-art. In the record of the World Anti-Doping Agency, just simply the names of the banned drugs can be written as a thick book. Besides these drugs, there are still new drugs, which have smaller side effect and are hardly to be traced, being developed every year. She said in swimming, the leading country in these drugs research is the United States, and other countries including China buy drugs from US. However, the US society is less tolerate with dishonesty. As a result, Marion Jones had to apologize for her past mistake. The problem with China society is sometimes "pride" of the nation is more important than dishonesty. It is sad that a lot of my friends rather believe that Tong Wen's drug test failure is due to pork chops.

After the dinner, when C drove me back home, I was lost in thinking. What is the real purpose of sports? The founder of the International Olympics Committee Pierre de Coubertin stated that "The important thing is not to win, but to take part". Where did the spirit he emphasized go? Is it because this spirit left us or we, the "modern" people, abandoned it?