Doping in Sports: Old Problem, New Faces

There can be fewer greater sporting spectacles than the Tour de France. Since 1903, the best cyclists in the world gather in France to cycle over 3000 km of varied terrain in 20 stages to determine a yellow jersey, a trophy and millions of dollars/euros/pounds. If it is not an exercise in pointless suffering, as Lance Armstrong once put it, then the ‘point’ of cycling excellence, glory, and/or substantial financial rewards certainly does come at a price that includes almost intolerable suffering.

It is difficult to conceive of the effort that is required to complete the course in the incredible times now achieved by its competitors. Cyclists reach levels of sustained skill, speed and stamina – and no small amount of strategic cooperation – to a point that is almost superhuman. And that is the problem. Spectators need not be suffering from chronic nostalgia to think there is something more than a little sad about the most recent goings-on in the 2007 tour.

On 24 July the Russian cyclist Alexandr Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping having performed a near miraculous comeback from a previous day's exhausted and below-par performance. The pattern followed that of Floyd Landis last year, whose dramatic recovery between stages had first raised eyebrows and then headlines. The very next day, however, Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen was expelled for violating internal ‘whereabouts’ rules of his team by missing two random tests. These out-of-season tests are thought to be essential to catch doping cheats in their out-of-competition training cycles, where they can enhance their physical capacities with illicit substances or procedures while not under the watchful eye of doping agencies. Rasmussen claimed to be in Mexico visiting relatives when it turns out that a journalist had in fact seen him training in Italy. All this might seem an unacceptable case of guilty until proven innocent until one thinks of the veritable litany of doping offences that have surrounded the tour in the recent past. Mistrust, it seems, begets itself.

As if this were not enough, on 20 September 2007 there was confirmation of the fact that last year's disgraced winner Floyd Landis has had his challenge to the efficacy of the doping results rebutted and now finds his claim to fame as the first winner of the Tour de France to lose the much coveted title.

It is not a coincidence that the leading team in the tour's recent history, Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel, who have won the tour team event for eight of the last nine years, has been forced to disband because it cannot find sufficient sponsorship. Commercialism, it seems, may be the saviour of the tour since big business does not want to be associated with cheats. Now there is an irony.

Precisely how one views the expulsion of these riders depends partly of course upon one's ethical stance towards the justification for the bans on doping and the presence of rules designed not merely to catch those who illicitly dope but also those who fail to present themselves for doping tests out of season. These are complex philosophical affairs. While much has been written on the incoherence of the ethical justification for the traditional bans on chemical enhancement such as anabolic androgenic steroids or nandrolone or human growth hormone, less has been written on the idea that one may be expelled from a sporting contest on the grounds that one failed even to be tested. This failure may take many forms and one may adopt a variety of postures in relation to them. For example, one may fail to notify authorities that one was not where one should be. One might be too late for the testers (who are only obliged to present themselves for a one-hour window). One may simply have forgotten. Or of course, one may have systematically avoided the testers (as in the case of the two Greek sprinters before the 2004 Olympic Games) for fear of being caught cheating and branded something akin to a sports criminal.

Nevertheless, it might be said, such infractions as are now identified with the Tour de France seem to be manna from heaven to the philosophers of sport in their teaching and research. And the salience of our work has recently spread beyond the narrower confines of the philosophy of sport into the editorials of such august journals as Nature and Philosophy. The editor of Nature has gone as far as to describe the doping bans as anachronistic, a historical hangover from a prurient age. He writes of the governing institutions of sport – specifically cycling – that:

A leadership ready to ride out the outrage might be for the sport in the long run. If some viewers and advertisers were lost along the way, the Tour could console itself with the thought that it got by with far less commercial interest in days gone by – and that it is more likely to re-establish itself through excellence and honesty than in the penumbra of doubt and cynicism that surrounds it now. (Nature 2007)

The excellence and honesty he commends to the cycling authorities and his readers is one where all athletes are entitled to such enhancements as they desire. While a reduction of the hyper-commodification of the tour may be no bad thing, I am not convinced that untrammelled libertarianism is the answer to the problem.

It is a good thing that the issues that drive our professional interest are widely canvassed and in such exalted places. In recent months acclaimed utilitarian Peter Singer has seen fit to comment on the action of the cyclists (Singer 2007), while the general problem attracted the first editorial on drugs in sport in the journal Philosophy since its inception in 1925 (O'Hear 2006).

The debate surrounding the issue of doping is with us to stay. Indeed it seems to refresh itself with new dimensions, such as those concerning the jurisprudence and ethics of the bans as much as the wrongness or badness of the acts and doping characters themselves. I hope this stimulates those from outside the field to engage more seriously with an issue that has already attracted much critical scholarship from within the ethics of sports so that the philosophers within and beyond sports can benefit from shared dialogue.