Caleb Seow-- the reality of sports today is that it is unsporting

12. The reality of sports is that it is unsporting.

Topic sentence: The intense competition and pressure to win in many competitions leads to a many athletes resorting to and demonstrating undesirable behaviour in many sporting competitions.
(Limitation) However, most atheletes are aware of their obligation and representation to their country and team. They understand the consequences and shame their undesirable behaviour might cause to the team if they act in such ways, thus are able to govern themselves.

Paragraph: Many athletes may be familiar with the immense pressure burdened upon them to win competitions they participate in. Ahletes have to often cope with the pressure of having to win not just for personal glory, but for the pride of their country and team as well, especially in competitions of the highest level, such as the olympics and the world cup. With such knowledge that personal reputation is not the only thing at stake, athletes may conform and display certain unsporting behaviour in competitions, such as disrespecting their own opponents and disrespecting the game itself. Some might even resort to foul or violent play, executing illegal moves that are unscrupulous, but giving them an upper hand in the competition. Furthermore, upon losing, many of these athletes refuse to acknowledge their loss, throwing tantrums and placing the blame for their loss on everyone else, but themselves. For example, many boxers have been seen to throw illegal elbow blows to the opponents, causing them severe injuries. in addition, these boxers continue to land blows on their opponents even after the bell has been rung. Such undesirable, unsporting behavior may contribute to such unsporting sports reality.

However, while it is true that athletes have a tendency to resort to unscrupulous means, this is merely but a dip in the ocean among many other more professional and sporting athletes who do not display such behavior. A large number of these athletes understand their obligations to their countries and teams, and displaying such undesirable behavior would only cause greater shame to themselves and their teams, as compared to if they had failed to win in a sporting manner. While failing to bring glory to the team and country with a trophy does bring about much shame and let down to athlete, failure to abide by rules and play in a sporting manner has a much greater negative impact to the athlete. During the recent world cup, we saw the English football team destroy the hopes of the English nation, by exiting the world cup at an early stage and failing to bring home a trophy yet again. on top of that, english fans were enraged to find the team coach refusing to shake hands with the opponent team, as such showing great disrespect to their opponents. This led to an unpleasant welcome home when the english team returned to england. Many athletes are aware that such the pride and reputation of a team should always be placed before winning the competition, thus promoting athletes to compete in a sporting manner. Thus, the reality of sports is that athletes do show sportsmanship after all.