From needle phobia to doping phobia: Can the fear of injections help us understand anti-dopism?

Abstract

This commentary aims to explore a possible cause-effect relationship between two pervasive phenomena: needle phobia, an irrationally high fear of needles, syringes and injections and doping phobia, a visceral rejection and condemnation of performance-enhancing techniques and substances (PETS) and the athletes that use them. It is argued that the rise of anti-dopism (the ideology underpinning anti-doping) in the 1960s paralleled a transition from oral ingestion to injection as the preferred way of administering performance-enhancing substances. In popular culture and media representations, PETS have become ever more closely associated with injections, especially after the 1998 Tour de France. Given how widespread the phenomenon of needle phobia is among both the general population and the athletes themselves, this paper hypothesises that the negative feelings surrounding injections may have been (unconsciously) displaced to PETS usage and users. This may help explain why anti-dopism has achieved uncontested hegemony, despite its inconsistencies and essentially irrational nature. Nonetheless, further research is needed in order to substantiate this possible cause-effect relationship.

• Anti-doping
• anti-dopism
• needle phobia
• doping phobia
• displacement

Notes

Declaration of interest

There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Notes

1. I owe this discursive device to Klaas Faber, who similarly wonders: would contraception have achieved widespread social acceptance if, instead of in a pill, it had been available only through injections?

2. “No Needle Policy: The UCI prohibits injections without medical indication”. UCI press release, 4 May 2011. http://femede.es/documentos/5-UCI%20Communique%20de%20presse%20No%20Needle%20Policy%20(eng%20)%202011_05_04.pdf, accessed August 2014.

3. http://www.uci.ch/mm/Document/News/Rulesandregulation/16/26/69/13con-E_English.PDF, accessed May 2016.

4. “IOC ‘No-Needle’ Policy – Games of the XXX Olympiad in London, 2012”. http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/2012-06-07-IOC-No-Needle-Policy-Games-of-the-XXX-Olympiad-in-London-2012.pdf, accessed August 2014.

5. “IOC Needle Policy – XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014”. http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Medical_commission/IOC-Needle-Policy-Sochi-2014.pdf, accessed August 2014.

6. “IOC Needle Policy for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio in 2016”. http://system.bwf.website/documents/folder_1_81/folder_1_140/folder_1_146/IOC%20Needle%20Policy%20-%20Rio%202016%20Olympic%20Games.pdf, accessed May 2016.

7. “No Needle Policy: The UCI prohibits injections without medical indication”. UCI press release, 4 May 2011. http://femede.es/documentos/5-UCI%20Communique%20de%20presse%20No%20Needle%20Policy%20(eng%20)%202011_05_04.pdf, accessed August 2014.

8. Paragraph 13.1.67 of the UCI regulations: “The following penalties shall be imposed in the event of an infringement of article 13.1.062: suspension from eight days to six months and/or a fine of CHF 1000 to CHF 100,000; in the case of a second offence within two years of the first: a suspension of at least six months or lifetime suspension and a fine of CHF 10,000 to CHF 200,000”.

9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = oEPEsOVgNGM, accessed May 2016 (see minute 3:12 of the video).

10. All translations from Spanish and French to English by the author.

11. www.deia.com/2012/08/20/deportes/ciclismo/bati-el-record-de-la-subida-a-arrate-con-unamano, accessed August 2013.

12. Black coffee with added liquor.

13. A beverage containing cola and other energetic plants.

14. A medicinal beverage containing alcohol.

15. A thorough analysis of the main Spanish sporting weekly in the early twentieth century, El Mundo Deportivo, as part of ongoing research on the institutionalization of Spanish sport, has yielded extremely rare mentions of PETS. On the other hand, as late as the 1970s and 1980s, doping was seldom openly discussed between fellow cyclists, if we are to believe the testimonials of Laurent Fignon (Fignon and Ducoin, 2009) and Cyrille Guimard (Guimard and Ducoin, 2012).