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{
    "id": 645124,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/645124/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 147,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ababu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 108,
        "legal_name": "Ababu Tawfiq Pius Namwamba",
        "slug": "ababu-namwamba"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Speaker, let me say at the outset that this is absolutely an important piece of legislation. I expected this House to be full to the brim and with enthusiasm in support of this very historic piece of legislation. As a recent former Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports in this country, I have interacted with these issues at close proximity. I have interacted with the WADA in their determination to rid of sports cheating across the world, especially through steroids and all sorts of substances that are foreign to the body. This is a matter to which we must give absolute support as a House. It is in recognition of the fact that sports, more than anything else, have put this country on the global map. Every time you watch television, whether it is the Olympics or the normal Golden Leagues or races across the world, you see our boys and girls winning and lifting the name of this country. When you listen to our National Anthem and watch our National Flag rise, your blood and body feels truly proud of being a citizen of this land. Therefore, we must protect this most important of all export in the best way possible. That is about protecting the image of our athletes. We must not have even a whiff of suspicion that our athletes could be cheats when competing out there. The passage of this Bill into law will set the bar or the standards and send a very clear message to the WADA and the entire world of sports that we mean business. I was very disappointment when I watched a young lady I have admired throughout her growth period as a sports person fall for doping early this year. The lady is the tennis star, Maria Sharapova. As I watched her admit to a stunned global audience that she had been using foreign substances and cheating my faith in the integrity of sports crumbled to an extent. I could imagine the impact that this development has had on many young people who have looked up to Maria Sharapova; their dreams and inspiration extinguished. Maria Sharapova is nearly the latest in a long list of athletes who have fallen from grace to grass because of cheating. Of course, we remember Lance Armstrong, the young man who took the world by storm in the world of cycling. Lance Armstrong had basically become the icon and standard that every athlete in the sport of cycling looked up to. When these young men fell from grace to grass, it brought the entire sport of cycling to its knees. These are merely recent examples of a problem we have had for a long time. I was looking through the history books and I was surprised that the use of steroids goes way back to the turn of the last Century. I came across a gentleman called Thomas Hicks who won the gold medal in the 1904 Olympics marathon. This gentleman had injected himself with a steroid called “strychnine” and he ran the whole marathon with this substance in his body. But because these substances also have poisonous elements, the fellow collapsed right at the finish line. Were it not for some emergency swift medical attention, he would have died because of the use of these substances. So, we are not just talking about cheating, we are talking about substances that can also ruin the health of these athletes. The list is long. Diego Maradona, at the 1994 World Cup in USA, a man that many young soccer players had looked up to as an icon in soccer, was disgraced when he was thrown out because of using ephedrine, a banned substance."
}