Cheating
Athletes have cheated by over-representing impairment to have a competitive advantage, and the use of performance enhancing drugs. German skier Thomas Oelsner became the first Winter Paralympian to test positive for steroids in 2002. He had won two gold medals in the alpine events but was stripped of his medals. One concern now facing Paralympic officials is the technique of boosting blood pressure, known as autonomic dysreflexia. The increase in blood pressure can improve performance by 15% and is most effective in the endurance sports such as cross-country skiing. To increase blood pressure athletes will deliberately cause trauma to limbs below a spinal injury. This trauma can include breaking bones, strapping extremities in too tightly, and using high-pressured compression stockings. The injury is painless to the athlete but affects the body and impacts the athlete's blood pressure.
Read more about this topic: Winter Paralympic Games
Famous quotes containing the word cheating:
“It’s perversion. Don’t you see what it is? It’s not natural. To go to great expense for something you want, that’s natural. To reach out to take it, that’s human, that’s natural. But to get your pleasure from not taking, from cheating yourself deliberately like my brother did today, from not getting, from not taking. Don’t you see what a black thing that is for a man to do? How it is to hate yourself?”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)
“How the mother is to be pitied who hath handsome daughters! Locks, bolts, bars, and lectures of morality are nothing to them: they break through them all. They have as much pleasure in cheating a father and mother, as in cheating at cards.”
—John Gay (1685–1732)
“Grant me profits only, grant me the joy of profit made,
and see to it that I enjoy cheating the buyer!”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)