Doping and anti-doping: the excesses of enterprise and the tyranny of transparency

Abstract

Building on Foucault’s theory of the ‘enterprise society’, this article situates the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport in the wider socio-economic context, where generalised competition has become a strategic game of innovation and enterprise. Professional and elite sport is shaped through innovation as athletes and teams look for ways to gain a competitive edge over rivals, while the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) resorts to intrusive controls in the name of ‘playing true’ and protecting the ‘spirit of sport’. The central argument is that the problem of drugs in sport is framed as though it amounts to exceptional and excessive – thus governable – behaviour, but this overlooks the extent to which the enterprise society is itself a game of excess. Moreover, examined as a contest between competition and control, the sporting arena provides evidence of how the game of excess intensifies, and also how this institutes a tyrannical mode of governance.

Keywords:

• enterprise society
• interactive governance
• Lance Armstrong
• World Anti-Doping Code

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Work, Society and Governance Research Cluster at NUI Galway in 2013, IPSA Research Committee 36 (Political Power) at the RC’s interim meeting in 2013 and the School of Sociology Research Seminar Series at University College Dublin in 2014. I wish to extend my gratitude to Kate Kenny and Siniša Malešević for inviting me to present at NUIG and UCD, respectively. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful and thoughtful comments and criticisms. Finally, I acknowledge the contribution of Barry Ryan, who provided insightful criticism on several drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. The Tour de France is one of three annual Grand Tours, or 3-week stage races. The other two being the Giro in Italy and the Vuelta in Spain.

2. A new revised Code has just been published at the time of writing.

3. USADA announced its Reasoned Decision on 24 August 2012, stating that it was imposing ‘a sanction of lifetime ineligibility and disqualification of competitive results achieved since 1 August 1998, on United States athlete Lance Armstrong’ (2012a, p. 1). The instrument of Reasoned Decision relates to Article 8.3 of the World Anti-Doping Code, which is interpreted by USADA as follows: ‘after a sanction is announced because the sanctioned party has failed to challenge the charges against the party, the Anti-Doping Organization with results management authority shall submit to the entities with appeal rights a reasoned decision explaining the action taken’ (2012a, p. 1).

4. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for example defines drug trafficking as ‘illicit trade involving the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws’ (https://www.unodc.org/).

5. Rasmussen was leading the Tour de France in 2007 when he was removed from the race by his team for lying about his whereabouts. He was subsequently served with a 2-year ban from competition, even though he had not actually tested positive for banned substances. Similar to Armstrong (along with many others) Rasmussen protested his innocence before eventually admitting to doping in 2013.

6. The Whereabouts system was originally 24/7 surveillance, but since 2009, athletes are required to provide information on their whereabouts for 1 hour each day between 6 am and 11 pm (WADA 2012a).

7. The contentious issue of ‘non-voluntary’ consent to doping controls, and also the extent to which the current system might be challenged on human rights grounds, was discussed at the working athlete’s meeting in Switzerland in 2011 (see Møller 2014).

8. During the press conference at the end of the stage, Froome also faced accusations from journalists (video available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay48ZWkoeHU).