Cheating Olympics

If I had a choice to win a gold medal by cheating and never get caught I would not do it. There are a number of reasons why I would not cheat and the guilt factor is certainly one of them, as well as the honesty factor, the reason I want to bring up right now is the competition factor. I ask myself why would I be competing in the first place? A large part of why we compete is to pit our skill, preparation, and determination against the competition. That being the case then why would I want to alter the competition to give myself an unfair advantage? I just thought of one of my wrestling matches in high school. It was my sophomore year at the Sparks High School Invitational Tournament and I was got matched up with one of my friends on the team. He had beat me in the past and we were evenly matched in practice; however, about 30 minutes before the match he told me he would let me win that day and sure enough I won the match. Now I can't know for sure if he really let me win but I do know it was easier than I thought it would be and because of that doubt I didn't have the same amount of satisfaction from the victory than if I didn't have this uncertainty about the level of competition he brought.

Another example, albeit not from my personal experience, is when the referee is paid off and makes calls to allow a certain team to win. Now I have never been in that situation (although in the moment sometimes I felt like I was on the team the ref was trying to make lose) but I wonder how satisfied the other team could be with that win, I must admit that this is not as good of an example because the team still has to play good enough to win but the point is they had an unfair advantage.

If I used performance enhancing drugs and won a gold medal I would not get much satisfaction out of the victory because I didn't really win based on my own ability. I would not use performance enhancing drugs because to do so would undermine the spirit of the competition.