The new doping scandal in athletics and the doubt that the next winner of the Tour de France is doped represent facts and questions that lead to the sport destruction. We enthusiasts look “our” athletes, for a moment we their best fans but then we wonder if what we look at is true or if we are looking at the crooks. Maybe that’s why we’re so excited about the London Paralympics, because we cannot imagine the possibility that they are doped. What to do? Argue that we must abolish the fight against doping as some say? Of course not! A first answer might be not to leave alone the young who are into sports, alone with coaches, parents, doctors or managers who can convince them to make wrong choices. I would like to talk to these young people and tell them to talk about this big problem and what are the reasons why you may fall into this trap and what they need to be convinced that they can win without getting hurt. We have to talk and talk and talk without ever leaving alone them with their own ghosts and with the suggestions of the dishonest people. I am convinced that no organization of the sport has never acted in this way, because for them it is only important to say doping is bad for health and it is persecuted by law. But no one is interested to the fears and ghosts of these young people. We continue with this biological vision of the athlete but we cannot hide ourselves behind the “I told you.”
Tag Archive for 'doping'
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Business and track and field are the same rules: it’s not only sufficient to be the fastest, you need to have ethic behaviors. The last doping cases teach us, read more on http://huff.to/12VdYSC
Doping dominates the media because it’s too common in sports. Only in the last days the most sensational news:
- sentence of 3.6 years to Italian Olympian athlete Schwazer,
- The U.S. Department of Justice calls the damage to Lance Armstrong. The former cyclist, if found guilty, must pay a fine of $ 150 million
- U.S. Olympian sprinter Crawford was suspended for two years from competition
- Sheikh Maktoum’s 15 horses were found positive for doping and their coach, Al Zarroniwas banned for eight years
- Spelman College has abandoned competitive sports also due to the spread of doping and corruption
Doping can be defined as a fraud towards society, because it is a behavior intended to infringe the rights of others through deception, that is to compete on equal terms. Destroys the sport making it unnecessary to apply the rules and the value of personal engagement.
Read more on: http://www.huffingtonpost.it/alberto-cei/il-doping-e-un-inganno-so_b_3022234.html?utm_hp_ref=italy#comments
“There are no more free meals” headline the newspaper Corriere della Sera. We never thought that this is just the rule of the sport? “If you are not able to compete is better that you’re home.” Well, that is brutal, but it is reality. In our system widely criticized, however, there is an organization, the Italian Olympic Committee, working to have athletes in a position to win, that means to be competitive. I am the first to say that this role could be played in the best way. Any way there is a department devoted to prepare for the Olympics, which provides funding for projects that are designed to implement programs that promote our talents in the world of competitive performance.
In sport there are no free meals: either you win or lose, it will be hard but it’s true and you have to fight also against those who choose shortcuts: doping. In politics the rule is different: we vote on the promise (I’ll remove the taxes, give jobs) and many believe and sling to vote for that party. Our parties should learn from sports, financing ideas and projects that promote competitiveness. Have to say what they want to do for young people who are unemployed, for companies that do not have credit from banks and so on.
Sport teaches us that the proposals must be perceived as simple and feasible and not difficult and bureaucratic. Each person must perceive as achievable even though he has not recommended by someone, because she will be evaluated for her skills and not for the friends. Skills and entrepreneurship are the basis for competitiveness. Familism and recommendation are the rules that lead to corruption wing. The parties must decide which side to take. Use the rules of the sport and have the solution to this dilemma, with the knowledge that you are doing everything, see doping, to destroy it.
Doping in economics is an approach known from immemorial time, and that involves doing appear to be true (for example, the reduction of taxes or false accounting) what in reality is false. Please do not promise but say what you will do to increase the competitiveness of Italy, because the problem is not taxes, but how to earn money to live in comfort.
About 40 years ago, two distinguished scholars Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson wrote about the meaning of success in the North American culture:
“The end justifies the means, and the success performs evil and dishonest actions. If there is a possibility, it is automatically perceived as a challenge, even if you respond to this challenge could lead to break the law, but if an individual is caught in the act of illegal uses of shortcuts he is considered a loser. It is not important what he does but the fact that others allow him to get away with it ” (The social matrix of psychiatry, 1968).
And further on:
“The American people have a rich mythology of people who have reached the success: the myths of Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie idealize the free initiative and the possibility of poor people to become rich and powerful. Admiration for this success goes hand in hand, however, with the condemn of the activities of dishonest industrial magnates. People are however ready to turn a blind eye to questionable ways of acting of a successful person if his behavior is then tempered by good works, offers for charity, fundraising for foundations and other public institutions. ”
So people fraud or in the case of Armstrong use doping because there is an opportunity. The important thing is not to be taken and he has succeeded throughout his career. Now not to be considered a failure (and possibly fail even financially) he has decided to admit what he had denied until then. There is no repentance in this interview tv confession, merely the tale at the public of what he did and what it costs him (75 million in one day). Even his sponsors were not interested to know if he was a clean athletes, because what mattered to them was the return on investment (see the article by Claudio Gatti: http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2013- 01-15/caso-armstrong-doping-213438.shtml). Even for them it is important that their athlete wins and when someone is discovered may also make a good impression showing outraged. Perhaps the only time that Armstrong is in trouble is when he’s with his children that he had to give explanations involving personal affects and to whom he has the responsibility of the father who must first follow the rules if he wants they learn to respect them.
The coach of the cyclist Italian national team Paolo Bettini said in an interview at Eugenio Capodacqua (La Repubblica) that he would leave this for another role to work with young people. Hays that young people are nauseated by inadequate training to them, from parents obsessed with money and sporting organizations seeking to achieve results at all costs. It seems clear that this approach is no more than the prelude to doping and it is the reason for the drop out of those young people who do not accept this kind of sport culture. Bettini expresses his thoughts very clearly: “You cannot force a kid to do training sessions of 4 hours and a half and then gym, sacrifices, hardships. Junior tables I’ve seen are the same of the seniors. The result is the nausea.”
He is also very clear on the proposals to be made: “The things to do are known: the school, the recruitment, the slow start, the rejection of the result at any cost. But when you put them into practice there is always someone who opposes and says – why change if we have always done so? – “. Too easy to respond to these people that it is because it is always done in this way that cycling has become one of the sport less clean.
Congratulations to Bettini for saying that young people need other things and that the Italian cycling needs to change. The sportpsychologists will certainly be at his side to support this battle of sport culture.
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I was asked how sport neurosis raises. Like any behavior and mood even those that limit significantly the life of a person arising from perceived distance between the expectations and the characteristics of the situation that is facing. If the self-efficacy is reduced and the indivual must to perform at the best level, then at this point it may arise a psychological disorder. Thorpe, the swimmer, wrote tha he hate the training but at the same time he was forced to find within himself the conviction to train with the intensity needed to win again the Olympics. He’s been very well written by Agassi, when during the game he decided that he would lose because he was no longer able to continue to play well, because he hated tennis. He said Schwarzer when he explained that he doped because it could no longer support the role he and everyone expected him to continue to play. These are the risks they face those who live the sport as the only way to reach the self-realization, it’s an extreme mental state which separates them from the others, with which often they do not share their fears. So they isolate themselves and their mind becomes a prison; doping, alcohol and drugs can all too easily become the only friends.
Today it has been published the first blog on L’Huffington Post Italia, topic ”Lance Amstrong, s system to win with doping”: http://www.huffingtonpost.it/
The Daily News reported on Tuesday that Nike may have been complicit in Armstrong’s doping scheme, described in the USADA report as the most sophisticated in the history of sports. Kathy Lemond, the wife of American cyclist Greg Lemond, testified under oath during a 2006 deposition that Nike paid former International Cycling Union president Hein Verbruggen $500,000 to cover up a 1999 Armstrong positive drug test.
In sports, doping has emerged precisely because of the approach that the pursuit of victory justifies the use of any means to get it, and those who are against this idea: “it means, then, that they do not want to win.” But not enough to win the will of an individual (Armstrong) willing to set up the fraud, it need to build an organization that moves in the same way and shares the use of doping as a winning system. Of course, the higher the charisma and authority of the athlete, the greater its influence across the organization, the more difficult it will be for his teammates to refuse doping. To consolidate this system needs strong alliances and partnerships with other organizations, such as sports or business. This is why the news of the possible involvement of Nike and the former UCI president could be this additional piece of the puzzle. Armstrong was not alone in this adventure and now we’re finally finding out who were his allies.
To learn more about fraud: Alberto Cei, The Lords of the fraud. The mechanisms of financial and sport fraud. www.francoangeli.it / Research / Risultati_ricerca_avanzata.ASP
