There are various conclusions we might draw from the recent high-profile doping cases involving Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin but the obvious one is not that the battle on doping is being won. The logic of public relations requires that anti-doping authorities use high-profile positive tests as evidence of their successes; it is for this reason that we cannot be seduced by their rhetoric.
It is my view that all athletes are performance-enhancing in some way. The question that eludes any clear answer is how many are using prohibited enhancements and the answer is: potentially, all of them. No substance is safe from a change in legal status, even something as apparently harmless as an altitude chamber.
Many athletes use a whole range of technological enhancers that have never reached the public domain or the attention of anti-doping authorities. We are, in truth, only at the beginning of the era of human enhancements, and attempts to stem the tide of drug use in sport will slowly begin to seem less important. Consider conversations about genetic modification or nanotechnology. Who will care about something like caffeine or testosterone use in such an enhanced future?
The only way to protect sport’s image is to re-evaluate morally the use of these enhancement technologies. Consider again altitude chambers. This week the World Anti-Doping Agency concluded a consultancy on their legal status - and, who knows, this could be a first step to them being outlawed in sport. We do not talk about users as deviants or corrupting natural athletic talent. So why should this all change if rules suddenly prohibit this technology? The mere fact of them being illegal would be the sole cause of our anxiety, because this will mean that users are cheats.
It is a moral minefield and I believe the only way forward is to focus on a healthy use of performance-enhancing technology in elite sport, not one that must operate under a shroud of secrecy - with, in some cases, dangerous health implications for the athletes involved.
No amount of positive dope test results will signify any enduring victory for anti-doping authorities. What we really want is for athletes to make good moral choices of their own volition. To make an analogy, if a compulsory charity tax is taken from my salary, then it would be improper to conclude that I am charitable. Similarly, if I am under constant surveillance that makes my doping impossible, then I am not acting ethically just because I return a negative drug test. We might claim the playing field is fairer but we could not attribute that to the character of athletes.
You might still say that an athlete taking drugs is wrong but my response will be that your ethical judgment relies on what the rules dictate. Were you not informed that substances such as nandrolone or ephedrine were illegal, you would have no particular moral feelings about their use (just look at the widespread use of creatine in Premiership football, for example).
At times I feel I am talking at cross-purposes with officials in anti-doping. They describe cheating as a justification for intervention. I believe, instead, that the major concerns of anti-doping officials should be located in the harmful effects of doping, rather than their challenge to the spirit of sport.
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