A Lengthy Introduction
On my way to a friend’s house for dinner on Tuesday, while briskly riding a piece-of-crap bicycle down Mansfield road, I rolled past Oxford’s prime graduate hang out spot, The University Club. There, my perpetually screeching front derailleur faced strong audio competition. The evening was warm, the sky bronzed, the students festive. Strong cheering could be heard from a few hundred yards away. On the windows of the massive building, South African flags flapped idly as women and men exited the club, their faces ranging from jolly to mad.
Why such hullaballoo? World Cup time can get pretty hectic in the Old Continent. Though I was tempted to stop soak up the atmosphere, rusty bicycle and I made it to destination.
Upon my arrival, in typical Oxford fashion, a group of men were shooting the proverbial shit at the kitchen table, wine glass in hand. The subject? Doping in sport. I was surprised. Academics usually prefer zombie contingency plans or Rawlsian justice chat to jock philosophy.
At the table, the Balco scandal, the Mitchell Report, and the yearly Tour de France debacle were each mentioned in passing. I joined in, and soon learned that one of the guys had addressed the claim that performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport in an online Oxford debate the previous morning. (In fact, their exchange might just be more interesting than the rest of this piece, but still, stick around. Or don’t.)
Mostly because I can, I thought I’d discuss the same subject here. And because part of my thoughts on such a claim lie in screeching bicycles and screaming fans, I thought I’d slip them into the introduction too.
Let’s begin from the beginning. Why are drugs banned? For a few reasons: They are seen as a threat to health, they create unfair divides between the haves and the have-nots, and more importantly, they violate the so-called “spirit of sport”. Opposing (and credible) stances on the question of performance enhancement are usually framed around the latter topic.
Although doping is banned, a quick look at media outlets will tell us, as Sally Jenkins put it in the Washington Post, that doping regulations and the subsequent ostracism of unruly athletes “aren’t getting us anywhere, except deeper into a vortex of bad law and science, black markets and failed social policy”. Athletes are always one step ahead of regulators it seems, and are probably using devices right now that the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) hasn’t heard about just yet. So, since we are failing this fight for clean sport, should doping simply be legalized?
The point I’ll try to make from here (that’s right, my thesis statement) is that this is simply the wrong question to ask. Doping is just a symptom of a much greater problem. And deciding whether to legalize performance enhancement drugs is like deciding whether we’ll treat one’s brain tumor with aspirin or not.
Let me explain. Doping has become a Catch 22, and although I typically say this about pretty much everything, right now I really mean it. It goes like this:
Dope-free elite sport could provide a good service to society through the inspiring performances of its wholesome, hard working, courageous role models. These role models, in turn, supplied elite sport with the spectacle and gravitas it needed to have a positive impact on society. Yet, for the role models to truly be role models, and for sport to be this glorious world whose games and competitions were reveled by all, athletes had to push back the limitations of the human body and surpass records established before them. In such a cutthroat, competitive world, they often had to do everything they could, even sacrificing their health, education, and future, (which admittedly, probably wasn’t very role-model-y in the first place, but I digress). To succeed, they took drugs like EPO, HGH, THG, diuretics, amphetamines, narcotics, glugocosticosteroids, and as soon as they did, they could no longer be the role models society wanted them to be. Elite athletes wouldn’t be role models if they doped, but often couldn’t be the role models if they didn’t. And the same applied to sport. Sport couldn’t be valued by all and do a good service to society if it allowed for dope, yet its very structure, and the very personification of those qualities that sport apparently exhibited and that society valued, almost required drug use.
Concise explanation, I know. As you can see, “role models” and “society” are recurring themes. It’s because we’ve set sport up this way. Performance enhancement is prevalent, and the subsequent debate over them is important, because we’ve made sport so important in the first place.
See, I can think of a million questions that are more relevant to answer before we start talking about dilemmas with performance enhancement regulation. For instance, why do we expect modern elite sport – in its present structure – to have such a positive impact on society? Why is it that dope-free sport somehow has more value than doped sport when neither is incredibly healthy? Why are we expecting wholesome, hard working, courageous role models when we are also expecting bigger, better, and stronger athletes all the time? Why was [insert doping athlete name here] admired more than a Nobel Peace Prize Winner (let’s keep Obama out of this) when [insert description of performance here], and despised as much as ENRON’S Jeffrey Skilling when it was discovered that she or he juiced? (Or, why do the guys on PTI act as if the need for instant replay in soccer is as critical as finding a solution for all the oil in the Golf of Mexico?)
Or…
Do we want society’s perception of sport to reflect what sport actually requires for those involved? If the answer is no, and we’re hoping instead for the reverse phenomenon, then we will definitely want to keep the ban on performance enhancement drugs, and safeguard this multimillion dollar token of sporting decency called the World Anti Drug Agency, keeping on respirator what sports lawyer Michelle Galen describes as “a modern day witch hunt”. By the same token, we will keep on respirator the hopes for a sport that may one day glorify positive human ideals, whatever that means. If the answer is yes, then in all fairness to the athletes involved – who are already stuck in dilemmas over doping or abandoning their “dreams” – it might be time to rethink drug policy.
And just for kicks, another question… Looking very carefully at elite sport in its present structure, is it responsible for society to keep pushing for this narrative of the “athlete as role model”? If the answer is no, then we will either have to rethink our choice of role models and maybe loosen up drug policy for it to reflect the pressures placed on the athletes, or tidy up the system by implementing perhaps more than just drug bans (like, for instance, maybe not letting our government invest billions in Olympic athletes). If the answer is yes, then learning that one of our “role models” is more juiced up than a Monsanto milking cow should not change our opinion on his/her value.
In answering every italicized question, we encounter two irreconcilable themes: the expectations placed by the outside word on sport, and sport as a full-time occupation. Before libertarian legalization is pushed forward, or the spirit of sport is vicariously defended, we need to better understand just what we’re getting all excited about.
Don’t get me wrong. I love sport. I loved the electric atmosphere at Oxford’s University Club during when England and Germany were fighting it up WWII style on the football pitch; I went sleepless for two weeks during the Vancouver Olympics. Most importantly, I love doing sport. Heck it probably addresses some visceral evolutionary need. Yet right now, with the way we have willfully transformed sport into a pathetic arms race through our obsession over split times and home run records, I don’t think we have the right to be outraged when Mitchell publishes a report or when Marion Jones gets incarcerated.
The sport we have is the sport we deserve; the sport we’ve been pushing for. Though on the surface it accommodates for the celebration of the good in humanity, upon further examination we realize that it celebrates, well, humanity. We encourage corruption, exploitation; celebrate excess, and those hungry for power. But we get offended when athletes, whose livelihoods and self-concept lie in this important world we’ve fabricated, “cheat”.
Tune back tomorrow, when I’ll look deeper into this question of the unrealistic expectations we have for sport; and into what the world of modern elite athletics has actually become. The divide between both, or perhaps the influence that one has had on the other, is at the core of the problem of drug doping. Tomorrow, world cup fans and rusty bicycles shall be discussed.
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