Well, we know that this story is going to be around for a bit! It was reported that there was a major steroid bust in China and in the United States, called Operation Raw Deal, and is considered to be the biggest steroid bust to date.
This is not too surprising to me for several reasons. One, next year is an Olympic year– and WADA and the other anti-doping agencies want to make sure that they address this before the Olympic Games in Beijing next summer. And second– it seems to be a story that is always in the newspapers. Performance enhancing drugs and athletes getting banned for drug doping seems to be in the news a lot today. Look at Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Floyd Landis– and these are just some of the few athletes that have been talked about.
But here is the thing– you look at the athletes like those listed above, and they got caught, but what about all of the other athletes that are out there using steroids to get into the spotlight? What about the coaches and supporting staff that might actually be participating in getting these performance enhancing drugs to these athletes? Also, what about others that do not want to acknowledge that steroids are an issue? What is being done about all of these issues?
This is the key– I believe that in order to fight the battle against steroids in athletics, you have to look at the entire picture and parties involved in the industry. Operation Raw Deal is an interesting Sports PR case study to look at. It seems to me that everyone is tired of having athletes always in the news that is negative (ex. getting banned from competition due to testing positive) In order to fix this, WADA and others are making sure that they step up and find out those that are involved. I think that athletics in general has a big challenge to face– athletes, coaches, organizations, and others involved have to do a lot to repair their reputation and image to the public. But in order to do this, we need to address the issue of steroids and make sure that anyone that is involved with them face the consequences.
These are just a few of my thoughts. I hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen 🙂
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Karen’s Public Relations Blog » Update on Operation Raw Deal: WADA focuses its attention on Scientists · November 22, 2007 at 7:29 am
[…] I realized that it has been a while since I last posted– I can sum it all up into one word– statistics! What can I say, I’m a doctoral student!  Anyway, I had written previously on Operation Raw Deal, which was one of the biggest drug busts that WADA had participated so far. Anyway, there was an interesting article that appeared on BBC News that stated that WADA wants to continue to target athletes, coaches, and other individuals involved in athletics. But they have a new target they are focusing their efforts on: scientists. […]