Why anti-doping?

Sports doping and anti-doping have and continue to develop in response to one another: anti-doping responds to a doping scandal with ever harsher policies and sophisticated means of detecting doped athletes, pushing athletes to find new ways to get around anti-doping. In its current incarnation, anti-doping rests on the twin pillars of moralism and surveillance technologies. Athletes and fans have generally adopted – or at least repeat – the view that doping is wrong and testing is necessary for “clean” sport. This shift from doping as an accepted and open secret to sport taboo is a clear success in just a few decades. However, the failure of anti-doping systems to eradicate doping is also clear as athletes continue to dope at (official) rates unchanged since the birth of the World Anti-Doping Agency. But if everyone agrees doping is bad, why do athletes continue to do it? This chapter will consider this paradox. Drawing on socio-historical work on sports doping, it will explore how and why anti-doping has become the prevailing view by focusing on the successful deployment of anti-dopism (underpinning values around and policies related to doping in sport) in the context of contemporary sport.