Winning At All Costs: Whatever Happened to Sports?

An insider?s revelations about professional sports, the Olympics, East Germany, China, the U.S.A., sex and drugs. For many of the wrong reasons, sports at the elite level today makes the headlines. Professional football players are being indicted for violence to members of their own family and for violence against women. Cheating among professional teams and players occupies our consciousness. Is winning at all costs all that matters? One might think that the spotlight on unacceptable social behavior, performance enhancing drugs and cheating by athletes, who we thought were our heroes, would have resulted in public dismay and a fall-off in popularity, but that has not occurred. Do the Olympic Games at least represent an escape from corruption within sports? What can be said about a world that nurtures the importance of winning? ANDREW KOSTANECKI, an architect by education and an industrial designer by practice, has also had significant experience as an athlete and a sports leader. He raced sailboats at the world-class level in two different Olympic Classes where he was U.S. National Champion and a World Champion Runner-Up. In 1988 he was Team Leader of the USA Olympic Sailing Team in Korea where his team won five medals, the most of any country. He became both Secretary and Vice President of U.S. SAILING before heading the USA delegation to the International Sailing Federation where he chaired two technical committees.