In high-performance sport, the boundaries between "permitted" and "unauthorised" are fluid, says Thomas Alkemeyer. The Oldenburg sports sociologist analyses the current doping debate - and finds the public uproar over the use of performance-enhancing drugs "astounding".
By Prof Dr Thomas Alkemeyer
The myth of a clean West German elite sport cultivated in the old Federal Republic - in contrast to the contaminated elite sport of the East - has finally lost its credibility, especially according to the findings of the research group led by historian Giselher Spitzer from the Humboldt University of Berlin. However, the current doping debate also suffers from a problem that already characterised its predecessors: it is predominantly conducted in a vocabulary of lies, fraud and abuse.
The crux of such criticism? It wants to disgrace reality with its ideals. Moral appeals for complete clarification and demands for an independent control system are ultimately fuelled by the desire to return to an ideal state projected into the past.
Admittedly, the gap between ideal and reality appears to be far less wide than is often implied. After all, the normative call for superlatives is a core idea of modern competitive sport: citius, altius, fortius - faster, higher, stronger. Not only since yesterday has it provided images of an unrestrained striving for performance, in which the economic ideal of productivity can be represented just as rousingly as the desire for national power and superiority.
"The contrast between "clean" and "unclean" has nothing to do with the empiricism of elite sport."
Scientifically sound training methods are just as much a part of producing top athletes as compliant sports medicine. The official definition of doping - doping is defined as the use of substances that are on a positive list - ensures that mere gradual differences on a continuum of performance-enhancing techniques are quite arbitrarily transformed into the sharp contrast between "permitted" and "unauthorised", between "clean" and "unclean". This has little to do with the empiricism of elite sport. Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to gain even a partial insight into its world knows how fluid the transitions are in reality.
Achieving top performance requires complete dedication to sport from a young age. The investment of time, energy, strength and passion, and often also money, is enormous. The everyday life of many young competitive athletes takes place exclusively between school, training centre and home. Their entire lives revolve around sport and are relentlessly planned with daily, training and nutritional schedules. There is hardly any time for other activities.
"The spectre of the dropout"
The circle of friends is recruited from the training group; identity and self-esteem are closely linked to the universe of competitive sport. Dropping out would be a threat to existence. Caught between the passion for sport and the attraction of belonging on the one hand and the spectre of dropping out on the other, everything is often done to stay "in the game".
It starts with harmless vitamin tablets for regeneration; painkillers are taken in order to be able to train or take part in competitions at all; protein powders help to build muscle; creatine can be used to increase training volume. The drugs are (still) legal, but the inhibition threshold is falling and the sense of guilt is fading. Step by step, step by step, the budding top athlete socialises into a milieu in which astonishing training spurts are completely normal. Here, turning to drugs is not a deviant behaviour but a thoroughly conformist one.
"Who cares if managers swallow pick-me-ups?"
The public uproar about this is astounding - especially at a time when the search for pharmacological solutions to all kinds of "human" problems is increasingly accepted and legitimised in other areas of society. Where is the similar mass media clamour when schoolchildren are given anti-dementia drugs for "brain doping"? Who is bothered when orchestral musicians - like sports marksmen - take beta-blockers?
Who is offended when writers write their poems under the influence of drugs, rock musicians try to develop their creativity with the help of marijuana or LSD or managers and drivers swallow not only vitamin cocktails but also other pick-me-ups to cope with the pressure to perform and stay awake at all times? Even in popular sports, the misuse of medication is hardly ever discussed, in contrast to doping in elite sports.
"Top-class sport is shrouded in a sacred light"
Top-class sport is evidently such a powerful symbol of modern society that there is a desperate struggle for its purity. It represents the idealised image of a society that is still fascinated by performance competitions and records. In contrast to the economic or political reality "outside", for a long time it was able to present itself as a better world of honest performance and fair competition. That is why it was shrouded in an almost sacred light; the talk of "doping offenders" speaks volumes. Doping and the doping debate threaten to destroy this illusion. In order to lend credibility to the fight against this threat, violations of fundamental rights and human dignity are even accepted: Nonchalantly, professional bans can be imposed on the part of sport, athletes have to allow themselves to be seen peeing during doping tests and athletes are to be turned into transparent specimens of blood, lactose and watt values. There is no public outrage.
Sport that follows the principle of outperforming is not possible without the use of all available means. And complete cleanliness may not even be in the objective interests of all those involved. The flip side of the moralisation of sport, the exposure of "doping offenders", can also be quite profitable - for the mass media in their struggle for the scarce commodity of attention, but also for doping investigators and testing laboratories. The system keeps running as long as it produces winners. Tension is guaranteed as long as the game of cat and mouse remains balanced. Under these conditions, according to Ulrich Beck, any serious sports ethics is like trying to stop an intercontinental aeroplane with a bicycle brake.