World sports bodies are fighting hard to contain cheating in sports. However this fight is becoming more and more difficult with each passing day. Gone are the days when athletes used to cheat in simple and unsophisticated ways. Now the cheating has gotten so technical it is difficult to even tell whether the actions of an athlete are still in line with regulations or not.
Days when cheating involved Diego Maradona punching the ball into the net at the soccer world cup final are gone. Or cricket captains tempering with the balls to get them to behave differently. The use of latest technology to aid game officials in making in-game decisions has had great impacts in this area. However some of the top sports governing bodies are reluctant to use such technology. This is because they do not want to disrupt the flow of play too much. Which is a very valid point.
However the cheating has also gotten very sophisticated. As much as the regulatory authorities are using the latest tech to detect the cheating, the athletes are now also using even more sophisticated tech to cheat. Now sports people have access to highly specialized performance enhancing drugs. These designer drugs are becoming more and more difficult to detect. For us we are taking a break from sports betting and resorting to online casino gambling.
Top athletes including the cycling legend Lance Armstrong have been caught cheating. This shows that the pressure that communities put on the athletes to perform is too much. There also is that human desire to excel beyond our own limits which is also pushing the sports people to cheat.
And the money, of course the money. There is now too much money in sports. Not even the dirty type of money typical of illegal betting syndicates. Yes, this too contributes to the filth that we now see sports but we are talking of the clean money. Sponsorship deals that are worth several millions of dollars. These give the sports administrators enough resource to be tempted to cheat. That kind of money is incentive enough to cheat. Where licensed operators will never cheat you out of your win.