Over the Easter holidays I want all 2A1 students to contribute to the following debate:
‘That sports stars are no longer heroes, merely fame and money hungry mortals.’
You are free to choose either side of the argument, however you must develop any point that you make. One sentence will not suffice. If any other Junior students would like to contribute, they are more than welcome.
Enjoy the holidays!
Sports stars are still heroes, as they have the power to get an average child to try and reach the standards of their sports hero. They also can give people motivation to do well with their lives, if they have gone through similar things as a child to their hero it could give them an inspiration.
Sports stars are paid a lot but they are a good “hero” for a child to have to better them and they are a source of entertainment too.
I believe that sports star are still heroes because of their achievements. I think this because the value of the experience, people chanting your name and (if your lucky) a medal is invaluable. A sports star will be loved forever (unless they cheat) but a rich man will only be famous among the people while he is rich and when he is rich. Most sports stars don’t worry about the money but instead try to reach their full potential. For extremely successful sports stars they get a lot of money from adverts e.g. Katie Taylor and Lucozade.
I believe sports stars aren’t still heroes. A sport star’s motivation, along with mostly everyone’s, is based on money, publicity (not necessarily positive) and glory. So they have no drive to be heroic (other than maybe publicity, but since there are cheaper means to gain publicity, that is ruled out). Any non-profit programs run by sports stars, for example, that appear heroic to the general public are generally masked campaigns for publicity and, occasionally, money (i.e Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong). Most of these programs or charities have incredibly high running costs and too much focus on too small a group of people (to the extent that the charity makes almost next to no difference to the problem it is trying to deal with). Some athletes even use their non-profit organisations and programs as a method of tax planning. There is also the fact that a large amount of sports stars use doping to gain an advantage and also other means such as boosting (the method of using self-inflicted pain to increase blood pressure and performance), both of which are used far more commonly than the public think. My point is, sport stars do not want to be heroes. They want to be winners.
I watched a lot of football when I was younger and a few football players were heroes to me, like Christiano Ronaldo etc. The amount of money they are paid doesn’t come into the picture when I choose a hero but I have to say that these players are paid far too much for what they do as a living compared to rugby players or something far more challenging. But even though they are paid a lot they still have a passion for the sport they play (well most do), but some I think are in it only for the money which is wrong. I think that a lot of football players are actually quite humble and not fame hungry. As Colm said, which I think is a valuable point, is that most football players aren’t in it for the money but are trying to reach their full potential and they encourage a lot of people to try their best at sports, they can be very good role models as well.