Doping; is it really so bad?

The first doping controversy of the games erupted yesterday when a 16 year old Chinese swimmer, Ye Shiwen, won the 400m individual medley in a record time. In particular her final 100m with its record split time of 59.68 seconds raised suspicions. John Leonard, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association said "We want to be very careful about calling it doping… The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, 'unbelievable', history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of the 400m individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta."

However Lord Colin Moynihan, the British Olympic Association’s chairman, pointed out "She's been through Wada's [World Anti-Doping Agency] programme and she's clean. That's the end of the story. Ye Shiwen deserves recognition for her talent." We should clearly assume that Ye is innocent until proven guilty. Either way should doping really be considered so much of a taboo; athletes use the best training regimes and all sorts of technology to get faster, are drugs really that much different?

Debatabase debate: This House would permit the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/sport/house-would-permit-use-performance-enhancing-drugs-professional-sports

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/30/ye-shiwen-world-record-olympics-2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19062639