Sports
Cheating in Sports: The Educational Role of Coaches
On Café com Tri, Roberto Abrahao and the hosts debate second chances, ethics, and the line between punishment and cancel culture.
Faced with course-cutting and doping in amateur sports, a dilemma arises between banning and educating athletes. On Café com Tri, the debate highlights coaches as essential ethical guides beyond the training sheet.
In both amateur and high-performance sports, what should be done when an athlete cuts a course, bends the rules, or turns to doping? The discussion around granting second chances and the stance of training groups took center stage on episode #57 of Café com Tri, featuring Roberto Abrahao, creator of the Um Golpe por Milha project.
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Acknowledging Mistakes and Breaking Rationalization
For Roberto Abrahao, offering a second chance to those who commit an infraction depends entirely on the offender's attitude. Drawing from his corporate fraud auditing background, he points out that a common pattern among those who cheat is trying to convince themselves they did nothing wrong. Athletes rationalize their misconduct—much like corporate excuses—creating justifications to avoid admitting their wrongdoing.
Redemption in sports demands clearly owning up to the mistake and showing a genuine desire to change. Even so, Abrahao emphasizes that rebuilding trust does not happen overnight: those who cheat must understand they will face an inevitable period of skepticism until consistent behavior and honest results prove the incident was an isolated event.
Coaches as Educators and Proportional Punishment
Discussing daily routines in sports clubs, hosts Beto Nitrini, Sérgio Magalhães, and Wagner Spadotto emphasized that a coach's role extends far beyond prescribing pacing, swim sets, bike rides, or track workouts. Coaches serve as educators, directly instilling ethical values and the core philosophy of sports.
For Beto Nitrini, simply kicking out an athlete who broke the rules—whether through unauthorized substance use or cutting courses—merely passes the problem to another team without solving the root behavior. The recommended approach is welcoming them for an honest conversation to address the wrongdoing. Nitrini stressed that punishment must be proportional, guided by the principle that justice is not vengeance, avoiding extreme measures that push athletes into social isolation or mental health struggles.
Standing Against Online Public Shaming
Another central theme was rejecting public shaming and punitive exposure across social media. The hosts noted that digital cancel culture often prioritizes viral engagement and views over constructively resolving issues through education.
Sérgio Magalhães highlighted that an athlete's relationship with their training group demands respect for the coach's technical and moral authority. Training groups bear the responsibility of fostering a safe environment for dialogue when misconduct arises, offering a path to realign values before taking drastic measures like outright expulsion.
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