Jeff Clarence L.

Ang

180273

Icarus shows a first-person perspective of doping in sports, specifically through Director

Bryan Fogel, an amateur cyclist, who essentially tried to play the system the same way that Lance

Armstrong did by examining how easy it is to get away with doping in professional sports. Fogel,

disturbed by the fact that Armstrong cheated for so many years, attempted to increase his stamina

and cycling ability through drugs while passing the drug tests — he injected performance-

enhancing drugs, testosterone, among others. In the film, he competed drug-free in the Haute

Route—which he described as “the single hardest amateur bike race in the world”—and came in

14th out of 400 participants. In order to further examine doping in professional sports, he talked to

Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian anti-doping program. Dr. Rodchenkov helped

design and implement a system which gave the Russian Olympians an advantage through the use

of drugs without getting caught by the WADA and IOC. This ultimately helped Russia win 13

gold medals at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

Doping in professional sports gives athletes an unfair advantage over their opponents.

Whether the athletes get caught or not, doping does not promote fair play because it gives the

athletes an unfair advantage over their opponents. While it ultimately results in the athletes

becoming more successful in the sense that they win more medals, the different banned substances

such as performance-enhancing drugs are synthetic and they artificially increase athletic

performance. Although it can be argued that athletes participate in tournaments such as the

Olympics to win, professional sports are also intended to test the natural limits of the human body;

but, by artificially extending those limits, doping is at odds with the essence of different sports.
Since doping artificially improves the athletic performance of the people who intake the drugs, it

also goes against the idea that sports facilitate an even contest between the competitors. In addition,

taking the illegal substances potentially causes harm to the human body. This raises the question

of whether athletes actually have to make themselves susceptible to long-term harm just out of

their desire to win and become successful in their field. Instead of just working hard, doping is

simply a shortcut to improving their performance. However, given the idea that athletes who dope

inevitably end up having an advantage over others, this puts pressure on the other athletes to dope

as well in order to produce the best results possible—they have to adapt to this measure of

improving athletic performance to win.

Nonetheless, it can be said that a lot of athletes actually end up taking performance-

enhancing drugs, whether they realize such or not. In the Philippines, Kiefer Ravena got suspended

from FIBA-sanctioned tournaments for a year and a half simply because of one mistake. This

should actually serve as an eye-opener for athletes to be sure of the supplements that they are

taking to improve their performance, as Kiefer argued that his lack of awareness regarding the

substances he was taking ultimately resulted to him taking something illegal. Moreover, it should

show that whether they end up getting drug tested or not, the ban on Ravena should signify that

doping is a serious offense and that it is not taken lightly, because at the end of the day, it harms

the body of the athletes and doping also does not promote fair play.