A Different Look at the Chris Benoit Tragedy

While listening to the radio where another news story was being run about steroids in baseball my husband asked me if the toxicology report was ever released on wrestler Chris Benoit.

I had followed closely the Chris Benoit story for many reasons. I took almost an obsessive interest sometime in high school about steroids in sports. Rather ironic considering I am not what most people would call a sports fan. The extent of my sports watching and following is figure skating, professional bodybuilding and pro-wrestling. Thinking back it was probably my interest in pro bodybuilding that sparked my interest in steroid abuse in athletics. When word came out that Chris Benoit had murdered his family I obsessively combed the internet looking for news stories about it. Eventually it came out that Chris Benoit's son, Daniel, had Fragile X and that he and his wife had argued about his care days before. Now the story had my undivided attention and I became increasingly irritated with how the media was sensationalizing the story. Steroids in wrestling were news while a family troubled and being pulled apart by a handicapped child was not.

So much good could have come out of this story. It could have been used to raise awareness about Fragile X and Autism, found approximately 33% of the time in conjunction with Fragile X. Instead it focused on the negative, sports and steroids.

An internet search on steroids and sports turns up many pages like steroids.com promoting the use of steroids as well as providing a source to purchase them. One interesting thing on this site is the history of performance enhancing measures in sports dating back to the original Olympic Games in Greece where the athletes were known to eat sheep testicles for the testosterone found in them.

Today the news is focusing on steroids in baseball. It's taken the spotlight off of steroids in wrestling. Where sports officials and the government seem more concerned about the use of illegal drugs, cheating, and to a lesser degree the health risks, the general public and those in the sport seem almost non-concerned.