Doping in Sports, How Long Has This Been Going On?

I know that this is coming in late, but I just wanted to add my own thoughts to this. As we all know, Marion Jones pleaded guilty to taking performance enhancing drugs during the Olympics. It is now possible that she could lose her medals that she earned in her events, several of them being gold medals. When I first heard about this happening, I felt no shock at all. I mean, I wasn't aware of whether or not she was doping, but when you look at sports in the last few years, it is been tainted with so many stories about possible use of steroids that just places a huge cloud over someone's victory, and it never goes away.

At this point, I cannot help but wonder, who is NOT doping in the world of sports? Now that is something that would truly shock me. We hear about athletes in different areas of athletic activity being under suspicion of using drugs or something else to win that game or that race they trained so hard for. Just the fact that they are being accused is enough to destroy a career. Not knowing the truth tears away at our consciousness, and we feel like we have to know the truth. The fact that we don't makes us back away from the accused. If they are found out to be guilty, we don't want to look like idiots for supporting them in the first place.

Look at what has been happening in sports for the last few years, and then wonder why we do not look up to athletes the way we used to. Lance Armstrong wins the Tour De France for the umpteenth time, but yet he is still accused of not winning fairly. There had to have been some performance enhancing drugs involved. No one can win these days without being questioned without provocation. Maybe he won because, as Robin Williams put it, having only one testicle made him "aerodynamic." The fact that nothing has been proven at this point must be so frustrating for Armstrong because this will probably hang over him for the rest of his career whether he likes it or not.