EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULES

Tour de France champion Floyd Landis, sprinter Justin Gatlin, the world’s fastest man, and Barry Bonds, who is chasing the all-time home run record, have all been labeled as cheaters.

They have plenty of company. Mark McGwire, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong are on the growing list of celebrated athletes whose reputations have been stained by allegations of performance-enhancing drug use.

Steroids, human growth hormone, blood doping and other drugs are as common in sports stories as statistics. Pro athletes in baseball, boxing, cycling, football, track and field, tennis and various Olympic events have tested positive for drugs.

“Athletes are adopting their own special definition of what cheating is to fit their own changing standards,” said Michael Josephson, head of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey. “There’s been a self-serving, self-adopted myth in sports that it’s the referee’s job to catch you, or it’s not cheating. Now they think it’s the drug testers’ job to catch them.”

Bonds has denied knowingly using steroids, and Armstrong has challenged allegations that he used drugs to aid his performance.

Cheating is as old as the sports themselves. The ancient Olympics suffered from cheating scandals, as do the modern Games. In the 1904 Olympics, American Fred Lorz won the marathon, only to be disqualified when it was learned that he was driven almost half the race. More recently, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky was fond of quoting a teammate who said, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying to win.”

However, some ethicists believe the current wave of drug use in sports is more than the latest win-by-any-means-necessary tactic. The sheer volume of drug-tainted performances occurs across so many sports because of the great wealth, celebrity and endorsements offered to athletes who dominate their field.

Consider that only a few decades ago most pro athletes needed to work in their off-seasons to supplement their pay. Not today. Tiger Woods earns $90 million in a year from endorsements and golf winnings, and 21-year-old basketball star LeBron James takes home about $25 million annually.

David Callahan, senior fellow at Demos, a New York think tank, is author of “The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.” He sees a clear connection between performance-enhancing drug use and the skyrocketing salaries that players can earn. “Many top athletes are fanatics, exceptionally driven to win and money further ups the high stakes,” he said.

The intensity of competition can be seen in the number of positive drug tests in baseball. Since 2005, Major League Baseball has suspended 127 players for performance-enhancing drugs: Fourteen were big leaguers, and 113 were minor leaguers striving for a major league salary, which begins at $327,000 annually.

“A rookie with his foot barely in the major leagues isn’t that far from being ... a washed-up ballplayer,” Callahan said. “We’re a society that so worships its winners ... and what a big difference a small little pill can make in your success.”

That rationalization can drive those at the top of their game, Callahan said, noting that Landis won the 2,270-mile Tour de France by 57 seconds.

“Americans are cutting corners to get ahead financially and professionally. That plays out most dramatically when the stakes are highest and the competition is at its most fierce,” he said.

That same drive to win can be seen in many fields, including business -- sometimes with disastrous results, such as the Enron Corp. collapse -- and politics. Historians are already writing about George W. Bush’s determined push to win Florida in the 2000 presidential election. Sociologists have also noted the frantic effort by many parents to place their children in the right pre-school, the start of a long, intense push to get their kids admitted to blue-chip universities.

In sports, ethicists say, the recent cases of deception by pro athletes deeply influence amateurs, and have warped youth coaching methods that place the importance of victory and individual success far beyond the focus on equal development opportunity and teamwork.

A few years ago Josephson tried to get college sports programs to sign on to a Statement of Principles at a sports summit he led, but his effort failed because of the pressures connected to the big business of college athletics, he said.

“The old idea that sports is a valuable vehicle to teach our kids is not so much the truth anymore if people are not teaching our kids the right way,” said Peter Roby, director for Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. “Kids are being raised in a generation that expects high performance ... with kids as young as sixth-graders being called the country’s next basketball phenoms.”

In a 2004 study, the Josephson Institute surveyed nearly 2,400 male high school athletes: 51% endorsed the coaching tactic of arguing with officials to influence calls, 58% said it was acceptable to inflict pain on an opponent as a method of intimidation and 30% approved of using a stolen playbook.

Overall, 56% of the young athletes agreed with the statement: “In the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating.”

This is not surprising, says Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University anthropologist, who contends cheating is essentially wrapped into our DNA. “The human brain is built to win and is built to size up the gains and losses of cheating,” Fisher said. “We have a natural affinity to ask ourselves, ‘Can I get away with cheating?’ ”

Age, gene variations, an individual’s upbringing and the potential benefits of cheating influence whether deception will be pursued, Fisher said.

“There are some people who are much more eager to follow social rules,” Fisher said. “However, just as those very conventional people may become adulterers, it makes a big difference as to what the payoff is, and how confidently that person believes they can get away with cheating.

“People cheat for good reasons, starting with stealing a loaf of bread if you’re hungry. It’s been harder to explain why we don’t cheat than why we do cheat.”

Athletes “have much more riding on their decision to cheat than just a game,” most notably wealth, status and more willing sex partners, Fisher said. “When there’s so much to gain, and you’re so young, that translates to the reproductive power that humans have chased since coming onto the planet.”

Animals will cheat for power too, said Frans de Waal, a psychologist and animal behavior expert who wrote the book “Our Inner Ape,” and serves as director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta.

Birds will trick their peers, occasionally sounding alarm calls when they spot food with others. When the other birds flee in fear of advancing death, the cheating bird will remain and enjoy a coveted meal, De Waal said.

The most innovative animal kingdom cheaters are the smartest, such as dolphins and chimpanzees. “The chimpanzee does all sorts of deceptive things to show how vigorous he can be,” De Waal said. “They compete over status and females, not so unlike the humans.”

Sports cheaters have used all kinds of tricks to win.

Rosie Ruiz boarded a subway in 1980, soaked her shirt to make it appear she was sweating, then ran a short distance to claim victory in the Boston Marathon. Ruiz was exposed as a fraud. Pitcher Danny Almonte pitched a perfect game in 2001 while leading his Bronx, N.Y., team to the Little League World Series semifinals. Almonte was actually 14 when he pitched, above the 12-year-old limit. His team was disqualified. The inventor uncle of 14-year-old Jimmy Gronen told the boy to place an electromagnet in his Soap Box Derby car, gaining a quicker start that propelled the youngster to victory in the 1973 race. A quick disqualification followed.

Those examples occur, Fisher said, because humans, and wild animals, “naturally take advantage of situations.”

In a chimpanzee study by De Waal, one primate named “Dandy” discovered a buried treasure of grapefruit left hidden by a trainer inside the enclosure with the other chimps.

After discreetly poking the fruit, licking a finger and looking around to see if the other chimps had noticed, “Dandy” proceeded to hide the food. Later, “Dandy” returned to the hidden grapefruit only when the others had fallen asleep. He ate the entire stash alone.

The lesson?

“If you’re going to take advantage of the rules, you’ve got to be smart about it,” Fisher said. “Too many people who’ve cheated have not been smart. That’s when you have the problems.”

Drug-using cheaters have smartly avoided detection for years, and still do, anti-doping experts argue. Even when they are caught, many offer colorful explanations. Gatlin’s coach has said a physical therapist exploited the sprinter by applying testosterone cream to his body during a rubdown.

Landis and his camp have floated several possibilities for his positive tests: cortisone shots taken to ease pain in his degenerating hip; drinking beer and whiskey the night before a Tour de France stage; thyroid medication; his natural metabolism; and dehydration.

“It’s just degrading to see all these denials and manipulations,” Josephson said. “You can’t believe anyone anymore. If we’re asking what’s the cost of this cheating, the cost is credibility.”

This month British sprinter Darren Campbell refused to join his teammates in a victory lap after they won the 400-meter relay at the European Championships. Teammate Dwain Chambers had just returned to the track after serving a two-year ban for using the steroid THG. “I’m not a hypocrite. How can I do a lap of honor?” said Campbell, who also refused to shake Chambers’ hand.

A civilized society, Josephson said, promotes ethical principles, and has learned, by establishing rules and laws, that lying and cheating are destructive. Certainly, rule-bending acts such as driving solo in a carpool lane, speeding or taking 15 items into a 10-items-or-fewer grocery line deserve less scrutiny than a felony.

“But if Justin Gatlin tests positive after winning a gold medal and talking to kids about how he’s drug-free, that’s just devastating,” Josephson said. “The stakes are higher now than they were when [Ty Cobb] sharpened his baseball spikes. The money’s greater, the moment of glory is celebrated more, more endorsements are available.”

Roby predicts changing the current sporting culture “will take a fairly long period of time.

“We’re all human,” he said. “We’re all susceptible to outside influences. But the right kind of behaviors can be learned as well.”

Former Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda has been around pro baseball for six decades.

“I don’t think anybody accepts cheating,” Lasorda said recently. “But if a guy believes he can get away with it, he’s going to do it. All he’s worried about is getting a guy out.

“He wants to win.”