The role of doping in achieving sports peaks

This information, as well as the following text of these notes, is relevant primarily for parents of children who dream of repeating the success of Gusman Kosanov, Alzhan Zharmukhamedov, Timur Segizbaev, Kuralbek Ordabaev, Nelly Kim, Vladimir Smirnov, Serik Sapiyev, Olga Rypakova, Gennady Golovkin, Dmitry Balandin and other outstanding athletes of the past and present.

Almost everyday

Today, doping, deceit and bribery have become almost commonplace in big sport. The entire professional sport is affected by their pandemic. Kazakhstan is far from an exception.

In the 1990s, the champion of the Asian Games in athletics, Olga Tereshkova, and the medalist of the Asian Championships in weightlifting, Faina Sivanbaeva, were disqualified for life, having been convicted of taking illegal drugs twice. Due to suspension from competitions for doping, the real contender for her medals, swimmer Elena Ermakova, who soon quit sports at the age of 26, could not go to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics.

Even before their victories at the Olympics, hurdler Olga Shishigina and cyclist Vladimir Vinokurov were subjected to a two-year disqualification for doping. Weightlifters Ilya Ilyin, Zulfiya Chinshanlo, Svetlana Podobedova and Maya Maneza were deprived of five Olympic gold medals for the use of illegal drugs. In addition to these four, in recent years weightlifters Vladimir Sedov, Zhasulan Kydyrbaev, Almas Uteshov, Ermek Omirtai, Nadezhda Likhacheva, Maxim Nyu, Timur Khasarov, Aruzhan Kolbay, Guldana Zhunis, Alisher Seitkazy, Erasyl Kenesbaev, Asylzhan Bektai, Anna Nurmukhambetova, Igor Son and many others. And also skier Alexei Poltoranin, track and field athletes Lyubov Ushakova, Alexander Bezrukov and Olesya Zadorozhnaya, gymnast Gaukhar Tleubayeva, cyclists Roman Vasilenkov and Kirill Kazantsev, volleyball player Anton Kuznetsov, hockey player Vladislav Nikiforov, tennis player Beibit Zhukaev, sambist Farukh Mirkhakimov.

In 2020, the captain of the Kazakhstan national football team, Baurzhan Islamkhan, who played for the Arab club Al-Ain, was disqualified for two years for doping. The gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro was brought to Kazakhstan by weightlifter Nijat Rakhimov, who achieved this after serving a two-year sentence for violating anti-doping rules. But in 2022, he was deprived of Olympic gold and disqualified for eight years for the fact that, as the investigation showed, he passed other people’s tests three times on the eve of the Olympics on the eve of the Olympics.

The names listed are the tip of the iceberg. The information database of the National Anti-Doping Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan contains the names of hundreds of domestic athletes caught doping at international and domestic competitions, as well as during training and sports camps. Dozens of them are minors.

Excitement, work, delight, but not health

“It’s impossible to win the Tour de France seven times without doping (the most prestigious cycling race in the world. – Auth.), – admitted to TV presenter Oprah Winfrey the most famous cyclist in the world, who played for the Astana cycling team, who for years denied the use of stimulants, Lance Armstrong, twice convicted of taking illegal drugs, stripped of awards and banned for life.

“Doping, I think, is accepted by everyone,” Andrey Arshavin, ex-captain of the Russian national football team, who ended his playing career in Almaty Kairat, said in an interview. – The question now is what and who is caught, what and who is not caught? One way or another, everyone takes doping to some extent. I don’t know how to solve this. This is an unresolved issue. This is the same as saying: “Let’s not fight!”. Everyone knows that war is bad. But no one wants to cancel the production of weapons. I think doping from the same series.

Similar opinions are expressed by the majority of former athletes and retired sports professionals. Many of them emphasize that the problem of doping is insoluble as long as big sport attracts the attention of hundreds of millions of people and is associated with huge profits, large prizes, scholarships, expensive gifts and state awards.

A person far from sports may ask: if doping is so indestructible, then why not allow it in professional sports? Such an amateur will be answered: “You are crazy, doping threatens health and life itself!”.

But those who are seriously involved in sports will not lie that this area of ​​human existence, even without doping, is filled with excitement, work, self-affirmation, joy, delight – anything but health. By the age of 30, the body of a professional athlete is an order of magnitude more worn out than the body of his peer, who watched the competition from the stands or at home on TV.

Six years ago, not only the sports world, but the whole of Kazakhstan was shocked by the sudden death of a 17-year-old master of sports, a member of the National Youth Cycling Team of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Dana Akhmetova. During training on a hot summer day, the girl lost consciousness and four days later, despite all the efforts of doctors, she died in the hospital. The reason is heat stroke and dehydration.

In the fall of 2021, 25-year-old Kazakh weightlifter Albert Linder took his own life, accused by his coach of doping. The guy stopped training and left for his native Taldykorgan. According to his mother, he cried in her lap. Shortly before his death, the athlete tore up and threw away his sports photos, certificates, diplomas, personal sports equipment. The brother of the late Semyon did not believe in the coach’s accusations. At his request, the National Anti-Doping Center replied that during Albert’s sports career since 2013, all of his doping tests were clean …

Even the right to the Olympics and the World Cup can be bought

Violating big sport in an embrace with doping is its inseparable accomplice – corruption.

In 1998, the oldest member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Mark Hodler, publicized bribery within the walls of this highest sports authority in the world. According to him, the right to host the Olympic Games can be bought. The scandal turned out to be so loud that high-ranking functionaries from Chile, Ecuador, Congo, Sudan, Kenya, and Mali lost their positions and membership in the IOC.

Former International Football Federation (FIFA) President Joao Havelange and his son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira were convicted of receiving multimillion-dollar sums in 2010 from a marketing firm. Returning dubious rewards, they begged the investigation not to disclose the ugly story. However, in 2012 there was a leak. Havelange was forced to leave the IOC membership, and Teixeira was forced to leave the post of head of the Brazilian Football Federation and the FIFA executive committee.

Another former head of FIFA, Joseph Blatter, published a book in which he described a fraudulent scheme, thanks to which Qatar received the right to host the World Cup in 2022. According to Blatter, the decision to vote in favor of this country was made in advance and became possible due to pressure on the former member of the FIFA executive committee and the head of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the legendary player of the French national football team Michel Platini, who was also accused of receiving illegal rewards and dismissal.

Fraud is not uncommon in Kazakhstani professional sports. For example, the scandals created in 2007 and the already mentioned cycling team “Astana” were constantly shaken. In particular, as Sergey Perov, head of the second department of the Anti-Corruption Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, reported at a press conference, sponsors annually provided more than 200 branded bicycles to the cycling team for free. And in 2018, its management concluded an imaginary contract with a company selling tires in Almaty for the purchase of the same bicycles and spare parts for them for 219,000 euros. But in fact, expensive bicycles were never delivered, and the money was embezzled. And such facts, Perov stressed, are not isolated.

In 2021, the former executive directors of the Astana professional sports club, Amanbek Kulchikov, and Lyazzat Shamshiyeva, the former executive directors of the Astana cycling team, were sentenced to seven years of restraint of liberty with life imprisonment to hold leadership positions in state and commercial organizations, and their accomplices received seven years each. conditional imprisonment.

Rumors about the corruption of Kazakh football have been strengthened by the results of anonymous polls published in the Black Book of the International Federation of Professional Football Players Associations (FIFPro) and characterizing the level of corruption in the most massive sport. In 2012, FIFPro polled 230 football players in Kazakhstan, 44.1 percent of whom answered that there were fixed matches in the republic, 33.3 percent – that they participated in them, and 83 percent admitted that they did not receive their salaries on time. Based on the totality of these answers, Kazakhstani football was awarded a shameful, second, place in the world.

The Football Federation of Kazakhstan called the given figures “absolute fiction” and sent an indignant letter to FIFPro. In 2014, the head of FIFPro, Theo van Segellen, who visited Astana, explained to journalists: “Our Black Book has been officially recognized by the European Commission, Europol, the European Parliament, as well as UEFA and FIFA. It is used in the fight against match-fixing.” In 2016, a similar FIFPro survey put domestic football in third place in the world in terms of corruption. Already better…

Remembering Lermontov

Today, not so much athletes compete as chemists and pharmacologists, coaches, promoters and sports functionaries. Chemists and pharmacologists – who will invent new, undetectable types of doping more and faster. Mentors, managers and officials – who will bargain for more rewards for their wards, not forgetting their loved ones, who will bribe judges, organizers of competitions, and athletes themselves more cunningly.

Appealing to conscience, advocating tougher anti-doping controls, as well as punishments for cheating and corruption in sports, is pointless. Things have gone too far. Just as it is impossible to live in society and be free from it, it is extremely problematic to count on victories in big-time sports without observing its cruel unwritten laws.

Today’s professional athlete is none other than a gladiator, whose fate was poignantly described by Lermontov:

Violent Rome rejoices, solemnly thunders

Applause wide arena.

And he, pierced in the chest, silently he lies,

His knees glide in dust and blood.

And pleads for pity in vain muddy look:

Haughty temporary worker and flatterer his senator

They crown victory and shame with praise.

What is a slain gladiator to a noble and a crowd?

He is despicable and forgotten, a booed actor.

Modern athletes do not pierce each other with swords and spears, do not enter the arena to wild animals. But like slaves, athletes are sold and bought, mercilessly exploited and moved to unseemly steps for the sake of victories. Only physically exhausted champions and champions, who make up an insignificant percentage of the total mass of sports pros, find a calm, prosperous life after the end of their career. And even then not always.

The essence of big sport remains, as in ancient times, gladiatorial: fight without sparing your belly, we accept you only with a shield or on a shield! The Olympic principle of Pierre de Coubertin “the main thing is not to win, but to participate” and the rule of fair play “fair play” are relegated to the back of sports thinking. Today, his main dominant is “victory at any cost.” Including at the cost of loss of health and honor.

Boys and girls, as well as their parents! Don’t you want a healthy long life? Then choose the second one between professional sports and physical education. And do it from childhood. Regularly, without fanaticism, until old age.