Jeff Clarence L.

Ang

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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.