Should sport drug cheats get second chances?

[EEEEEEP]

We have all heard about Lance Armstrong who disgraced the Cycling world, the Russians who doped in the Olympics and the Essendon Drug scandal. Now begs the question.... Should sport drug cheats get second chances?

The IOC’s rule 45 states that anyone banned for a doping offence for six months or more should miss the next Olympics (four years or more).
..
Case for Yes
- People deserve a second a chance
- People make mistakes (albeit not a very strong case for a yes)

Case for No
- Brings a bad reputation to the sport
- Makes the public lose trust in a sport and it's legitimacy
- Teaches drug cheats a lesson

[spectroscopy]

i definitely reckon it depends. I feel like the standard answer should be no as a deterrent but an appeal system or something would be needed. i think athletes who are more or less forced into it by their club/country without much choice in the matter should probably be given a second chance. whereas someone who just cheated maliciously for years (especially in an individual sport) and got away with it probably shouldnt get a second chance. it really depends.
for example with mass doping scandals at football clubs, i often empathise with players. i have a few friends who are in the VFL and know someone who played up in the AFL for a little while and football players really just go with the flow at training. you have so many professionals, doctors, and coaches working on everything you just sort of go with the plan. if you are an AFL player who doesn't know anything about drugs or medicine, played footy for a small club for years, and got drafted really young, and your team doctor who is an MD says "here mate its a supplement its legal no worries i checked everyone does it" you would probably just say "ok i guess".  a more extreme example would be olympians in countries where competitors are forced to be doped and taken steroids which is another example i think its okay.

in short - it should be a pretty holistic assessment but in general - if you are an individual who purposely broke the rules then you probably dont deserve a second chance

[slothpomba]

I think we should aim for mandatory doping, it'd certainly be entertaining.

It's a process of thought. Why do you think doping is bad? Is it because its cheating? What counts as cheating exactly? Are some forms of "cheating" worse than others?

All these questions must be answered.

For instance, a lot of people have said certain swimsuits were cheating because they were far too hydrodynamic (right word ?). I won't post a picture in case i offend anyone with modest sensibilities but they were very fitting if i recall. They actually did speed people up but do they count as cheating? Eventually they were banned for the record.

Same with runners. The original Olympians didn't have sports clothes. This is because sports, as recreation, wasn't really a concern for 99% of the population who had to work from almost dawn to dusk, especially in a competitive sense. They ran in their normal, daily street clothes (more or less), including regular shoes. To those people, our runners of today would perhaps be cheating as well. The original marathons were racked by scandals including people doing part of them by horse (hard to monitor back then).

(Note their outfits; original Olympic marathon - 1896)


I think anyone caught doping should at least lose any achievement derived from it. I think for serious doping, serious sanctions are needed. It should be assessed on a case by case basis. For individuals under immense pressure with a lack of history of doping, i think they deserve a second chance. For a serious, orchestrated and planned regimen, especially one that shows little chance of going away, then perhaps a total ban is warranted.

It should also depend on how much of an edge the drug(s) gave them and just how wildly they flouted the rules (loophole or smack in the face?). Some attempts at doping give only a very modest edge (based on the drug(s) used), others would be massive.

[TheAspiringDoc]

I think that the biggest argument for no is actually that users of illegal performance enhancing drugs make gains that they never could have if they hadn't used the drugs. Even if they then stop using the drugs, they will still either preserve the unnatural gains made while using the drugs, or will at bare minimum have "muscle memory" from their time using the drugs. What this means is that they will be able to regrow their muscles faster and to a higher standard than an athlete who has never used drugs.
Muscle memory is a real thing. See for example the runner Colin McCourt who is now returning to running from a multi-year hiatus from the sport. In a few months he has already gone from obese to a level that many people couldn't achieve after many years of training. And although he obviously has good genetics, his rapid comeback can't be attributed to that alone - this is muscle memory from his elite years allowing fast retraining.