Doping does not undermine the Olympic Spirit

At the end of June, taking part in the National Final of the Debating Matters sixth form competition, I spoke in a debate about whether allowing performance-enhancement drugs would undermine the spirit of sport. But despite having finished my speeches, the issue has remained at the forefront of my mind. Twice, during the opening ceremony of the current Olympics, we were reminded to oppose the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports: first in Lord Coe’s speech, and then in the Athletes’ Oath.

The furore over drug use in professional sport has escalated to monumental proportions in recent times. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) inquisitional enthusiasm to prevent any kind of doping has resulted in the institution of one of the most intrusive and inhumane inspection systems ever conceived. Everyone from the Council of Europe to Lord Coe has spent a great deal of energy moralising about the supposedly corrupting effect of enhancement drugs in sport. At the same time, we are told to believe that sport is an exhibition of pure human skill, free from “unnatural” elements which pollute the pure, innocent spirit of the contest.

Anti-doping types have harped on about the idea that the consumption of performance-enhancing substances, such as anabolic steroids and erythropoietin, is not a “natural” means of raising an athlete’s standard. The trouble for Lord Coe, and his co-thinkers, lies in defining the “natural limits” of human performance, and what should be considered “natural” methods of improving one’s physical abilities. What is the difference between high-altitude training, hypoxic air machines, and Erythropoietin? All three offer the same benefit: an increased red blood cell capacity, which allows an athlete to carry more oxygen, thus boosting his or her endurance. Ah, but there is a difference! Taking a trip to Ethiopia to raise one’s PCV (Packed Cell Volume of red blood cells) is fair game, but EPO is a no-no, apparently.

The only way in which drug-taking could be sensibly construed as cheating is if it were a biomedical shortcut, a method of raising an athlete’s performance in competition whilst significantly reducing the amount of training and effort required. One must state it plainly: this is a falsehood. Ben Johnson, the greatest sporting sinner of our time, did not slack off because he took anabolic steroids. The drugs allowed him to raise his performance ceiling, but only if he worked at it. He in fact worked harder to run the 100 metres in 9.79 seconds than he could have without doping. In my opinion he deserves commendation, not criticism.

Doping incidents in professional sport have become so frequent that, when it was revealed that Hysen Pulaku, an Albanian weightlifter, had tested positive for a banned variety of anabolic steroid, there was no widespread shock. The BBC reported that Pulaku was “the first athlete ejected from the Games”, as if he was the first in a lengthy list of transgressors (as he turned out to be). Yet, given anti-doping has never been stricter, why do we seemingly grow more cynical of every new record or outstanding triumph? The answer seems to lie, in part, in the shift from amateurism to professionalism.

In effect, the anti-doping activists are pining for the good old days of amateur sport, the days when a man worked as a doctor on weekdays, but who played international sport on Saturdays. I am too young to remember that supposedly golden age, being born in the year that rugby union followed rugby league in abandoning amateurism. Since 1995 the average international rugby union player has grown by a foot, and his muscle power has increased considerably. In fact, athletics was one of the cheerleaders of professionalisation, passing several amendments to its rules in 1982 in order to permit the practice. Since that time, sport has been transformed. At the top level, it is no longer a game where taking part is more important than winning. Sport is a career, and events such as the Olympics are now businesses.

One of the main arguments for the abandonment of amateurism was that the quality of sport was lower than that which could be achieved by professionals; with an improvement in standards, according to the theory, more people would watch and follow sport. Of the various Olympic mottos, the most resonant today is ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (Faster, Higher, Stronger).

This being the case, why oppose performance-enhancing drugs? One only has to look at Ye Shiwen, the Chinese swimmer who won gold in the women’s 400m individual medley last week, to imagine how magnificent sport could be with medical enhancement. Without doping, Ye swam the final 50 metres in a time close to that of Ryan Lochtie, the American winner of the equivalent men’s race. Imagine how astonishing a performance Ye could have produced had she taken EPO or anabolic steroids. Professionalism necessitates a drive to raise performances to the highest possible level, and this goal cannot be achieved without a small amount of biomedical assistance. Even going by WADA’s own definition of the ‘Spirit of Sport’, one can confidently say that the legalisation of performance-enhancing drugs will not, in any way, undermine that spirit.

So let us embrace the era of the athletic superman, and assist him or her however we can. Sport will, as a consequence, be vaulted up to a new standard of excellence. This must be our goal.

Douglas Morton is a student at Bearsden Academy, East Dumbartonshire. He has contributed this article as winner of the Best Individual prize at the 2012 National Final of the Institute of Ideas Debating Matters Competition

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• William Lilburne

  The argument against legalising performance-enhancing drugs
  in sport is simple. If they are legalised
  then everyone who wants to compete at the highest levels will be forced to take
  them. So every parent who wants to support a child who wants to compete at the highest levels will have to support their child in taking them and thereby in
  putting their own child’s health at risk. No parent should ever be put in this
  position.

• FlyingInn

  Good analysis. It would be better to be open about performance enhancement regimes for reasons of safety, sanity and arguably medical research. Either the Olympics is about sport as business, like Formula 1, or it is not. But it abandoned the moral high ground (what there was of it) when it allowed professional athletes decades ago. That decision cannot be undone – arguing about doping is simply tinkering to try to retain some self-respect.

  Whatever the performance enhancement regime there is nothing ‘natural’ about training and competing at this level. It’s an industry in which the more successful attract sponsorship funding which allows them to remain competitive at events which are effectively owned by corporate investors to further their brand image. What we should be doing is requiring that training regimes and pharmaceuticals be open and well-documented, but more importantly we want the Olympics sports industry to invest much more in local amateur sports, especially at a time when government is pouring funds into supporting the Olympic business model while selling off school playing fields to save a few pennies.

• kawasakiman

  Why not make it legal, and then give all ‘drug free’ athletes an advantage in each event ?

  If the drug users keep loosing, then it takes away the gains from using them.

• scotsgal

  For sports to be as wholly inclusive as possible it is about bringing the human body to peak condition as naturally as possible, if we were to allow the regular use of drugs we could guarantee that the health of our sports people would suffer to such an extent that their shelf life in the world of sports would be drastically shortened as each new set of drugs developed would be more aggressive.

• FergalFury

  The Anti-Doping Centre is to be turned into the National Phenome Centre, it will gather DNA samples from everyone in the UK under the aegis of the NHS. Orwellian, yet the Indy was ordered not to write about it.

• TerryBarnes

  The issue is that they already do – they’re already pumping them full of the stuff that’s legal – creatine and intravenous vitamin jabs and the like. Being a top level athlete is in itself a health risk – the changes to your body that take place when you train to the very highest levels are, in the long term, bad for your health.

  Regular exercise, a sensible diet, all that stuff is good for your health. The intensive and repetitive work required to be at the very top of your game, the injuries and conditions you’ll pick up along the way, the strain that a high red blood cell count puts on your sleeping/resting heart – those things will shorten your life.

• TerryBarnes

  But you’d just end up in the same situation as today. People hiding their doping to gain an advantage. You need to avoid creating perverse incentives.

• kawasakiman

  True, but unless they make all drugs legal, then there will never be a solution to the testing issues.

• TerryBarnes

  You misunderstand me. The potential for advantage would still exist by using something other people don’t know about and don’t test for, avoiding the handicap you propose for those openly doping.

  Remember, most doping is out of competition, if you test purely at the even, you’ll miss 90% of doping.

• James Shaw

  Interesting argument but I don’t think the justifications for drugs in sport extend any further than allowing for an alternative Games in which performance-enhancing drugs are allowed to be used. That way, those who wish to achieve the outcome naturally are not coerced into taking potentially harmful drugs to compete with the best. Drugs in sport aren’t inherently wrong but they are only justified when all competitors actively choose to take them, not when they would create severe inequalities or coerce people into taking them out of necessity. Would be very interesting to see which Games became more popular too; I have a feeling that more people are impressed by Ye Shiwen’s doping-free achievement than they would be with an improved time fuelled by unnatural drugs.