[joe_the_user]

It's not just the children but anyone outside the realm of a "pure competitor" who winds-up harmed unfairly by doping.

The average professional cycling or the average professional American football player is not wealthy and is not competing purely for the love of the sport. Rather, they are only moderately well-paid, not terribly likely to reach the true big time and working extremely hard just to stay in the game. Often they come from impoverished backgrounds and view sports as their way out (and often it isn't). Essentially, competition is their work. It's fairly morally repugnant to create a work-environment that impels someone to use dangerous drugs just to literally stay in the game. It's not as bad as the factory owner that dopes his workers with speed to improve production but it's headed in a similar exploitative direction.

[alasdair_]

I am not quite clear what the difference is between your examples and, say, startup CEOs who choose to use stimulants to deal with a crushing workload.

Or, ignoring drugs, every professional boxer runs a risk of long term brain damage, yet they still choose to do it, despite most of them meeting your criteria of not being especially wealthy/ solely doing it for love of the sport.