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Abstract
This article sets out to make a case for a non-moralistic and non-Manichaean approach to the doping phenomenon, where doping is seen as but one more form of technology applied for the enhancement of performance in sport. Departing from these premises, the article proposes a re-interpretation of the history of doping and anti-doping in the light of the interpretative frame proposed by the media scholar Brian Winston to analyze the processes of technological change and innovation. According to this dialectic model, the evolution of any technological novelty must be understood in the wider social framework where it develops and in particular as the result of the interplay of social accelerators (the social necessities or demands that the technology in question helps to solve) and brakes (the social forces whose status or position may be challenged by the new technologies). It is argued that the main and probably the only social force pushing forward the innovation processes in sport, including doping, derives from the inexorable tension of sport towards hierarchy, performance and victory. Among the social brakes for the development of doping one can add a part of the medical and journalistic professions, the sports governance structure and some national governments. The current state of doping practices and anti-doping policies is the result of the balance of forces in the tension between social brakes and accelerators, which accounts for all the apparent inconsistencies and whims of the current list of prohibited substances and methods.
Notes
1. ‘Estdopage tout apport exogène qui conduit à développer artificiellement les facultés physiques. N'est pas dopage toute sollicitation qui contribue à bonifier naturellement le corps.’ All translations from French and Spanish to English by the author.
2. Quoted in Houlihan (Citation2002, p. 151).
3. ‘Elle était protégée par une porte hermétique. À l'intérieur étaient installées deux mécaniques. L'une raréfiait l'oxygène, ramenant son taux de 20 à 13%, pour simuler une altitude variant entre 2800 et 3600 mètres, l'autre absorbait les excès de gaz carbonique afin d’éviter que l'air ne soit vicié. J'ai passé dix-huit nuits de vingt heures à huit heures du matin, ainsi confiné, bercé par le ronronnement des instruments.’
4. ‘Là, je me suis vu infliger une impressionante batterie de tests, cliniques et de terrain. Mes capacités physiques ont été pesées, mesurées, extrapolées, mises en équation (…) L'imprimante des ordinateurs a craché à l'infini des courbes cabalistiques, des tableaux abradabrants et des bordées de chiffres abscons. De prime abord, j'ai eu le net sentiment d’être un cobaye. Puis je me suis piqué d'intérêt pour cette inspection méthodique. J'y voyais l'application scientifique de cette introspection que j'expérimentais de manière empirique sur mes chemins d'entraînement.’
5. ‘Le simple fait de vouloir dépasser l'autre, même naturellement est une forme de dopage. L'idée même de competition me parait minable.’
6. This point has been again well illustrated by the debate sparkled by the disclosure of information about the use of cutting-edge mechanical technology by the Swiss cyclist Fabian Cancellara, a new ball bearing system which, according to reports, would allow a gain of up to 2.5 seconds per kilometre (Ryan Citation2011). This new technology is supposed to be legal since not prohibited by the UCI, but it nonetheless would give an advantage to those using it, regardless of the possible exaggeration of its real influence in performance. The extent to which this advantage is a fair one is open to debate: ‘Cancellara attacked in [2010] París-Roubaix 50 kilometers from the end, what means that his pedaling system could have awarded him an advantage of two minutes and five seconds. Spartacus overtook Thor Hushovd in the finishing line by exactly two minutes’ (Corsi Citation2011). What is clear in any case is that this kind of mechanical innovation is mostly seen as legitimate, and that Cancellara (fortunately) would not be stripped of his victory at Paris-Roubaix because of him having used this innovative technology.
7. See, for instance, the enthusiastic descriptions of the huge crowds summoned by the first edition of the Tour de France in 1903 by its promoters, the journalists of the Paris newspaper L'Auto, quoted in Thomson (Citation2006) and Dauncey and Hare (Citation2003).
8. This is one of the main conclusions of my thorough review of the scientific literature on the effects of EPO in healthy adults (López Citation2011). Concerning the scarcity of original research on the effects of human growth hormone in healthy adults, see Liu et al. (Citation2008).
9. Dimeo (Citation2007) has described the open involvement of the American and German scientific communities in research on performance enhancement and drugs (mainly amphetamines) in the 1930s and the 1940s, but this involvement could be considered a result or a reaction to the increasing demand generated by elite sport (and warfare, by the way), and it is not found anymore, at least on a frank and open basis, in the late decades of the century.
10. ‘Sans doute aurais-je dû commencer ainsi mon propos: “moi, Christophe Bassons, sain de corps et d'esprit …” .’
11. ‘J’étais certain de réussir sans subterfuge. Ma valeur suffirait à me transporter vers les sommets.’
12. ‘Ma différence était mon honneur.’
13. ‘La ausencia de voces críticas en el arco parlamentario, por lo que se refiere a la entrada en escena del Derecho Penal, solo puede entenderse en base a razones de estrategia electoral, puesto que, como es obvio, el rechazo de cualquier medida destinada en abstracto a preservar el juego limpio en el deporte y a proteger la salud pública es decididamente poco comercial en términos políticos.’
14. It is noteworthy that the two presidents of WADA, so far, have been a Canadian (Dick Pound) and an Australian (John Fahey).
15. An article in the Nouvel Observateur magazine published in 1998 referred to some Italian doctors as ‘sorcerers’ (De Pracontal Citation1998), due to their reputation as cutting-edge doping experts.
16. It is noteworthy, in this context, that the 2010 Tour de France recorded the worst ever performance of a French rider in the history of the race (John Gadret, 19th of the final general classification), despite this edition having been widely acknowledged as one of the ‘cleanest’, to use an anti-doping expression, of the last decennies.