Blood Doping

INTRO: “Bang” the gun has set off the 1988 Olympic 100M dash and Ben Johnson of Canada was quick out if his shiny blue blocks. In little under 10 seconds he had won his first and only gold medal. He also set a world record with a time of 9.79, he was almost unhuman like. In that race he looked faster than the speed of light. He was on cloud 9 and so were his adoring fans, but they would all come crashing down off their cloud into rock bottom. ("Blood doping goes viral as cheats slip through the net")

The Olympic officials would soon find out that this man faster than light would get busted for the use of blood doping. Blood doping is the act of taking your own blood out and putting into a spinner and activating your red blood cell which cause oxygen to get carried easy and faster to your lungs. It also ignites a natural hormone called erythropoietin(EPO)(Bryner). The athlete doing this trains for several weeks, even months with this blood out of their body and gain their endurance up and right before the race the athlete injects the blood with the supplement of EPO. This helps the doper increase maximal aerobic power (Olympic committee) . This is an advantage because the athlete has more endurance to run and he/she becomes a faster racer. Blood doping was first invented after the WWII to help heal disease with respiratory disorders and blood disease(Seoul)

Blood doping is very hard to test to catch the victims, it is so hard to test because it ruins through the bloodstream with your own blood. Ways they test blood doping is through urine. The users eyes will also turn a yellowish color around the whites("Blood doping goes viral as cheats slip through the net"). With all the hazards of blood doping and the unfair advantage to all other athletes and through its revolution in time, I believe blood doping rights that have been abused and should have a stricter punishment because it's an unfair advantage to other athletes, it's a health hazard to the the athletes, and it is very hard to get caught.

Body paragraph 1: Through the history of cycling there has been many great athletes, such as Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich.