The following blog is going to be very different to what I have published previously. It will be largely philosophical and sociological based so if this is not your thing I would suggest you click on the back button or close this article and look for something else. If you are, however, interested in looking at things a little differently then you may find that this challenges what you think you thought you knew about the issue at hand.
Those that are familiar with my blog will also recognise that the subject matter seems to have no relevance to the main objective of FitGreyStrong. Just to be clear the aim of FitGreyStrong is to provide biopsychosocial insights derived from research and science to assist older people’s choices and inform their behaviours in relation to matters pertaining to health, fitness and nutrition. That being said, recent events in the world of sport that have once again brought the use of performance-enhancing drugs to the centre of the public’s attention have inspired me to write about and re-visit research I conducted many years ago that directly attempted to understand the nature and context of the doping problem. The current scandal surrounding the allegations of state-sponsored doping by Russia and the corruption associated to allow this to take place has once again rocked the world. On November 9, an independent commission set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirmed widespread use of performance enhancing drugs and blood doping by Russian track and field athletes, which were encouraged and covered-up by coaches, doctors, and state and sports officials. Many will see this piece as completely off-the-mark, maybe even heretical or just purely academic in nature. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to discuss the ‘darkside’ of the doping problem because if there is one thing that you may agree with me on it is that you virtually never read anything that questions the current status quo.
Many years ago I wrote a Master’s thesis titled: An elite track athletic squad’s perceptions and attitudes to the use of performance-enhancing substances. At the start of this task I presumed that my position and attitude to performance-enhancing substances or “doping” would be consolidated. I was sadly mistaken. Initially – and rightly so – I held the view that elite sport was and should be “natural” and “clean” with elite sporting contests resembling a battle between those that had worked the hardest and smartest. I also believed that following my research I would have a much clearer understanding of this contentious issue. I was hoping that this would potentially provide some further lines of inquiry for research in the quest to find some practical solutions to the doping problem that existed and still exists in elite sport today. Unfortunately what happened was my research generated more questions than answers and left me wondering if we truly understand what it is that we find so distasteful and offensive about doping in sport.
The ethos and values of sport that we hold dear to our hearts are in many ways oxymoronic to the objectives of modern day elite sport. It was over 100 years ago that Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator, historian and acknowledged as the Father of the modern Olympic Games said:
The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in Life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity. (The Olympian (1984) by Peter L. Dixon, Roundtable Pub p 210.)
Sport at the turn of the 20th century espoused and romanticised the virtues of health, fairness, equality, ‘sportsmanship’, amateurism, humility and was viewed as essential in solidifying moral and social strength. In fact Coubertin went as far as suggesting that sport could promote peace between different nations and cultures. I’m sure Coubertin would be turning in his grave given what modern elite sport has become. So what we now have is a situation that what we believe elite sport should be, and what it actually is, are in fact dichotomous paradigms completely conflicting with each other. You just can’t have it both ways because they are essentially polar opposite in nature. Perhaps part of the problem to this lies in the fact that the desire to hold on to the past is strong – and for valid reasons – because sport was a virtuous pursuit symbolic of all that was good. However, modern day elite sport has clearly morphed into something very different where, I would contend, ‘its’ moral compass is simply pointing in the wrong direction.
I realise that some who read this blog will strongly disagree with my arguments. It is not my goal to advocate the lifting of the ban on doping in sport, but rather to explore the rationale behind why we actually support such bans in the first place. Understanding the reasons why we currently prohibit certain performance-enhancing practices is clearly fundamental to the way sport will be conceptualised and practiced in the future so we need to have a damn good idea and be quite clear on why we are doing what we are doing. To give you an example of just how misunderstood the issue of doping in sport is, if you were to ask 10 people on the street why doping is banned, 8 of them would reply by saying:
“because it’s cheating”.
However, cheating is defined by the rules that govern the conduct of the participants. In other words, an athlete or team can only cheat if their actions purposefully contravene some rule that defines what is appropriate conduct whereby such conduct gives that person or player an unfair advantage over his/her opponent(s). As doping is currently banned then of course when athletes dope they are cheating. But if the ban on the use of doping was to suddenly change – which allowed athletes to utilise drugs to enhance performance – we can no longer say they are cheating because what they are doing is now permissible.
The rules of sport basically then define what constitutes cheating but in terms of the rationale used as justification to ban doping as a means of enhancing human athletic performance, there are three fundamental arguments currently advanced to support this position. Each of these arguments when examined more closely though are not reconcilable as there exists many anomalies and contradictions.
The three arguments are:
1. Health concerns – “It is bad for athletes’ health so we should protect their wellbeing“
This seems ethically justifiable and sensible on the surface and is a key reason why the International Olympic Committee, for example, currently prohibit certain performance-enhancing substances and practices. However, if we were really concerned about the health and wellbeing of our elite athletes then sports that have an inherent risk of severe injury or death would be outlawed. Why do we, then, accept the dangers associated with boxing, horse-racing, car racing, cycling, rugby, etc where participation might and can have catastrophic consequences? When we compare the potential dangers associated with the use of performance-enhancing drugs to dying this line of argument seems quite silly. So using health as a reason to ban doping does not stack up. Even if we accept health as a reasonable basis to ban doping, this is at complete odds to our acceptance of people’s rights, for example, to choose to smoke or drink which are behaviours that are known to have very detrimental effects on health and can indeed shorten lifespan. In free democratic societies we place significant value on individual autonomy and freedom but abhor paternalistic government intervention or control into our lives if that is seen as encroaching on our rights as individuals. The question then is, why do we allow individuals to make informed choices to smoke or drink but take this choice away from informed athletes?
2. Fairness or equality concerns – “Sport should provide a level playing field for all athletes“
Maybe the fairness argument is robust enough to justify the ban on doping? Unfortunately, it is perhaps the weakest of the 3 outlined. The Australian Senate Committee Inquiry into Drugs in Sport in 1988 – inspired largely by the Ben Johnson scandal at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and perhaps the forgotten events of the Alex Watson affair – repudiated the fairness argument. They and many others have asserted that globalised elite sport is fundamentally unfair at its very core. Is it fair for example that someone is genetically more gifted than their competitor even if that advantage has been ‘naturally’ bestowed? Just because something happens naturally does not necessarily make it fair. Is it fair that an athlete born in a poor country has to compete against an athlete that is born in a rich country where they will have access to good coaching, sports scientists, sports medicine, athletic programs, nutrition, equipment, technology, facilities etc etc? This epitomises what could be referred to as an unfair advantage. Really at the end of the day nothing in elite sport is fair.
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3. The third argument used to ban doping is somewhat esoteric and therefore more complicated to grasp. This argument postulates that the practice of doping is viewed as positively deviant behaviour that compromises the athlete by dehumanising them as a person.
The transformation from a ‘clean’ to ‘doped’ athlete resembles something “Frankensteinian”. By this I mean the doped athlete undergoes a type of metamorphosis that is viewed – not biologically but socioculturally – as something not quite human. The ‘doped’ athlete has therefore transcended accepted notions of what it is to be human and as such, is rejected as an acceptable human form. The disgust that is expressed toward the doped athlete also appears to vary from country to country so this suggests that the specific context with which this takes place plays a key part in how doping is viewed as a practice and to what extent the doped athlete is perceived as being dehumanised. I think this argument holds promise but it is not issue-free. The problem is that what conceptually defines our ‘humanness’ or of being ‘human’ is dynamic and constantly changing. Such concepts are a product of a complex mix of the particular sociocultural, historical and political forces at work so what could be construed, then, as dehumanising at this point in time, could change as things often do; so this line of argument presents a challenge in terms of its robustness to stand the test of time.
Finally, there are the special medical considerations of elite athletes that, some have argued, could be improved by the judicious, closely monitored and medically supervised control of performance-enhancing drugs. There are sports scientists and doctors which have suggested that the demands of elite sport and the training required has now exceeded the human physiological ability to cope adequately. Ironically, if this is the case then those very same doping practices that are prohibited may assist athletes recuperate, recover and restore bodily equilibrium and in fact improve their health.
References
- Brown, W.M. (1980) “Ethics, Drugs and Sport.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, VII, pp. 15-23
- Brown, W.M. (1984) “Paternalism, Drugs and the Nature of Sports.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, XI, pp. 14-22
- Hoberman, J.M. Mortal Engines: The science of performance and the dehumanization of sport, The free press, New York, 1992
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