Marion Jones handed the five medals she won at the Sydney Olympics back earlier this month after admitting to using the designer steroid “the clear” from Sept. 2000 to July 2001.  The following week, Thomas Bach, vice president of the International Olympic Committee, told the Associated Press that the IOC will now have the “official process of disqualification and maybe other measures like non-eligibility for future games and so on.”
           
The IOC is considering officially wiping Jones’ name from the record books, stripping her of her world championship medals, asking her to return her prize money as well as appearance fees, and banning her from participating in future Olympics in any capacity. The IOC opened an investigation on Jones in 2004 and, with her recent confession, now has the opportunity to act upon the suspicions they had back then.
           
At the same time the Jones news was breaking, in Texas the big story was about the UIL beginning its random drug testing of student athletes. The UIL will screen high school students involved in athletics from 400 different schools across the state.
           
Many across the state have problems with this idea of testing high school athletes for steroid use, but, with Jones adding herself to a growing list of professional athletes confessing to – ahem – “enhancing” her skills, the state’s idea to begin testing so early in an athlete’s career is not half-bad.
           
The American pubic is hard to please. We are always looking for the next big thing, and today’s professional athletes feel this pressure. Athletes no longer feel the pressure to just win the game, get the gold, etc. They now also feel pressure to accomplish it with some historical feat.
           
After achieving these “accomplishments” and a significant period of time has passed, it seems inevitable the athlete who has made history confesses to having used some type of enhancer. Then the public that was wowed and awed by this athlete is suddenly appalled. Yet, is not the public partly to blame for the growing use of steroids by today’s athletes?

In the society we live in it seems athletes are pushed into a position where there is no other alternative but to use some type of “supplement” in order to just keep up with the game. We are no longer impressed with what is just humanly possible, and athletes are feeling that pressure. We want our athletes to be superhuman and to perform unimaginable feats in order to shock and wow us without using anything to supplement the human talents they possess.
 
In the end, who are we to say anything?  The more superhuman feats we want to see performed by human athletes the more inclined we should become to the use of steroids and other enhancing supplements.  The Bionic Woman may be able to run 60 mph, but Marion Jones can’t, at least not without some steroids.