It is short sighted to promote sportsmen as the role models for the youth of a country.

Just a brief point before I get started. There are plenty organizations that test for use and abuse of steroids, yet athletes are always upping the ante. Designer steroids are allowing many to bypass such screens (as seen by the fact that many athletes have had their medals stripped after being tested multiple times), and some coaches are even pursuing gene doping, an untested and unsafe method, as a way to circumvent these organizations. And even if they're caught, these are the people that get the most attention, not the athletes who played by the rules. My opponent is conflating two things that are not the same: encouraging sports as a beneficial hobby, and encouraging people using pro athletes as a model. Since what he is doing with his case is the latter, that is where this debate should be focused. Yes, we can all agree that someone becoming physically fit is better off on the whole. But what about someone who is competing on the level of a pro athlete? I would say that I've already given a lot of what happens " steroid usage, violence, and bad sportsmanship. However, it goes deeper than just what we see on a day-to-day basis, what's broadcast on news stations the world over. It involves intense pain and physical trauma, and early death. How about that intense pain and physical trauma? Let's talk about the training. High altitude training is a must for many athletes, but it causes major harms. Acclimatisation to high altitude leads to the production of too many red blood cells, making the blood thicker and reducing blood flow. This stresses out the heart, and deprives parts of the body of oxygen. High altitudes also lead to intense weight loss (both from loss of appetite and the body eating itself), risks of weakening the body's immune system, and lengthened times of recovery from muscle damage. That's not to mention the expansive list of altitude illnesses that can result from pressure changes and oxygen deprivation.[1] But that's probably the least of their concerns. The real problem starts at their overall level of training: "One word that describes it best is BRUTAL. You have to be insane and neurologically damaged in your head to undergo some of the training regimes top level athletes put themselves through, day after day, week after week for an entire year. It"s not normal but it"s the price you pay to be the best. A typical pro athlete would train around 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week. This might not seem like a lot of hours but the intensity of training is ridiculous. In fact, without sounding pompous, an average fit individual would struggle to make it through one of our warm-ups. Take a particular endurance session of a former world champion squash player (I do NOT recommend trying this at home). His training session would involve getting on a spinning bike with a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest. He"d then start pedalling hard until his heart rate hit 190 beats per minute which he"d maintain for a duration of 10 minutes. This would be followed by a 3-minute break and the cycle would be repeated 6 times! If you wish to fathom what this feels like, the next time you go exercising, try taking your heart rate to a level of 180 beats a minute and maintaining it for 20 seconds. Make sure you have a trustworthy friend by your side." [2] BRUTAL. What does this intense training result in? Let's look at endurance sports. Studies have shown that "When the data of extreme endurance athletes was isolated, it was found that the health effects of regular physical activity became less pronounced, and were instead replaced by significant heart damage."[3] Here are some examples of how this affects athletes. "For example, distance-running legend Micah True " better known for his role as Caballo Blanco in the book "Born To Run" " died while on a trail run from cardiomyopathy due to an enlarged heart. True was just one example of seasoned endurance athletes who have experienced sudden cardiac events during exercise. Marathoner Ryan Shay and Ironman triathlete Steve Larsen are others, and most recently professional Ironman triathlete Torbjorn Sindalle was forced into unexpected retirement due to premature wearing of his bicuspid valve."[3] That link has more than a half dozen other examples of this happening. And this is just with the endurance athletes. Don't think that other athletes are exempt from these physical harms. The vast majority of pro athletes die young. The mean death rate for professional athletes is worse than the general population.[4] Athletes in their mid-30's experience sudden death as a result of clogged arteries that result from a lifestyle that includes poor diet, excess stress and overtraining, all of which are common among athletes. Overtraining specifically is a big problem. It can lead to imbalances in the brain, nervous and hormonal systems, upper respiratory illness, compromised immune function, and increase chronic inflammation. It contributes to heart disease and increased risk of death. What's worse, many of these abnormalities can lead to short term improvements in athletic performance, which makes them continue pushing themselves, mistakenly thinking that their training has been successful. Worse still, athletes and society as a whole often accept this ill heath as an inextricable part of athletics. This unhealthy "no pain no gain" approach leads them so far as to assign names that are often glorified to the harms of overtraining: "athlete's heart," "runner's knee," "swimmer's shoulder," and "runner's anemia." This just perpetuates the health harms and spurns treatment and prevention efforts.[5] But let's think about it for a second. Why should we logically believe that overtraining is bad? It has to be just correlative, doesn't it? "Any athlete who overtrains must also overeat to maintain his or her bodyweight and strength, and that leads to the heart of the problem, which is the overproduction of free radicals in the body. The body produces many different kinds of free radicals, but every kind is a molecule that is missing an electron in its outer shell. That makes free radicals unstable and on the lookout for a way to fill the electron void. When they bump into a normal healthy cell, they steal one of its outer-shell electrons from the cell wall, thus damaging the cell and setting off a chain reaction, with each damaged cell molecule looking to replace its missing electron. What you get is a bunch of permanently damaged cell walls that can lead to such problems as cancer, heart disease and arthritis. You name it, and free-radical damage to the cells of the body has been linked to it."[4] So not only are there problems associated with the overtraining of these pro athletes, but they're causally linked to these harms. I will address the point about emphasis of sports vs. academics in R4. For now, I kick it back to Con. 1. http://www.altitude.org... 2. http://health.india.com... 3. http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com... 4. http://imbodybuilding.com... 5. www.philmaffetone.com/files/20158/Athletes-Fit-But-Unhealthy.pdf