Can a ban on doping in skiing be morally justified?

Loland S.

1    Introduction

As most other sports, skiing has had its doping cases with athletes using banned performance-enhancing means and methods. Cross country skiing has been particularly exposed, probably due to extensive possibilities of biomedical manipulation of a key quality in performance: endurance.

During the last two decades and with the 1999 establishment of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) as a decisive step, the struggle against doping has intensified and involves not just sport but also public authorities and governments. The struggle however is not without challenges. For instance, to draw the line between acceptable and non-acceptable performance-enhancing means and methods is a complex scientific and moral enterprise. Actually some scholars hold that the ban on doping in sport is problematic and even unjustifiable (Black & Pape 1997; Brown 1991; Tamburrini 2000; Savulescu et al 2004). And, as is evident from extensive doping cases, some athletes and coaches seem to accept and indeed practice doping (Waddington and Smith 2009).

What then are the core reasons to categorize and ban certain performance-enhancing means and methods as doping? With examples from skiing I will examine whether anti-doping can be properly justified from a moral point of view.

2    Methods

The approach is one of practical, normative ethics. I present a systematic and principled argument in which ethical dilemmas are examined on the background of relevant facts and examples. The approach is inspired by the methodology of reflective equilibrium as developed by John Rawls (1971). First, I will sketch how intuitively appealing arguments in support of the ban need modification. Second, I will propose a justification of a ban in which traditional and new arguments are combined in a systematic way.

Traditional arguments: fairness and health

A frequently used argument in support of anti-doping is that doping is unfair. The underlying understanding of fairness seems to be a neo-Kantian one: Fairness is a moral obligation on rule adherence that arises when we are voluntarily engaged in rule-governed practices (Rawls 1971). Skiers using EPO or anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) break the rules to get an exclusive advantage. For doping to be efficient, dopers depend upon the rule adherence of others. In this way dopers enjoy the benefits of the cooperation of others without doing their fair share. They are free riders of the sports system and treat other competitors as means only in the striving towards their own success. Skiers who are not caught get away with a rule violation and an exclusive and unfair advantage. They cheat.

The fairness argument however does not really help in the justification of the doping ban itself. We cannot justify a rule by reference to the wrongness of breaking it. What is at stake here is the very rationale for banning doping in sport. In fact, the fairness argument is sometimes used to support lifting the doping ban (Tamburrini 2000). If a significant number of skiers break the rules without being caught, a minority of rule-abiding skiers has a disadvantage. Morality does not pay. The situation is unjust and the obligation of fairness becomes problematic. To restore justice, an alternative could be to make all kinds of performance-enhancing means and methods open to all.

Stronger arguments in favor of anti-doping can be found in the view of doping as a health hazard and as implying a significant risk of harm. Although solid scientific evidence might be lacking in some cases, there are strong indications that extensive use of EPO and AAS implies serious health risks and even the risk of death.

The problem with this argument is that practicing elite sport in general involves significant risks of harm. Long-term and hard training implies a constant balancing of the anabolic and catabolic processes of the body. Imbalances can result in overtraining and injuries. Similarly, the intensity of competition can lead to acute injury. In events such as ski jumping and downhill skiing, the taking and calculation of risk can be considered part of the skill test. There is always the possibility for serious harm. An argument on banning doping due to health risks could be developed into a more general argument on banning elite skiing and elite sport as a whole.

This conclusion is unreasonable however as no distinctions are made on the relevance of health risks as related to the values of sport. Health is not the primary value in all circumstances. Risks of harm must be weighed against other values. Athletes take their chances in training and competition. In elite skiing there is a strong drive to improve, to realize athletic potential, to test the potential of talent. The challenge of the training process is to strike the optimal balance between anabolic and catabolic processes. The challenge of competing is to put in the necessary effort to succeed and at the same time be smart and avoid injuries. One of the important challenges in ski jumping and downhill skiing is the proper calculation and taking of risk. Health risks linked to doping seem to be of a different kind. Why?

The nature of athletic performance

An idea often expressed by sport leaders and athletes is that drug-enhanced performance comes about without training and individual effort. The enhancement is somehow ‘undeserved’. Doping is considered ‘unnatural’ and ‘artificial’, and the risk involved, therefore, is considered unnecessary and non-relevant.

The problem is that ideas of the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’ are to a large extent social and cultural constructions that change over time. There are countless examples of what was considered ‘unnatural’ yesterday has become common practice today. During most of the 20th century there was a strong resistance against women’s sports as ‘against nature’ (Guttmann 1991). At least in the Nordic countries, the introduction in the 1970s of weight training among cross-country skiers resulted in strong protests as such training was considered ‘artificial’ and against the ideals of the sport (Bomann-Larsen, 1993).

The idea of drug-enhanced performance as contradictory to sport values and somehow undeserved indicates that the question of anti-doping goes straight to the heart of discourses of the meaning and value of sport. A moral stand point towards doping needs to build on interpretations of what sport or more precisely what athletic performances are all about.

An athletic performance is the complex product of a high number of genetic and non- genetic influences from the moment of conception to the moment of performance. As with all human phenotypes, a clear-cut distinction between genetic and environmental factors is impossible. For analytic purposes however the distinction makes sense (Loland 2002).

Genetic factors refer to the predispositions for developing relevant phenotypes for good performances in a sport. A person with good predispositions is usually characterized as a ‘talent’. Cross-country skiing talents are predisposed for developing endurance. Alpine skiing talents are predisposed for developing fine tuned motor action and strength. Talent in this sense is distributed in the so-called natural lottery and based on chance.

Athletes develop talent through gene–gene–environment interaction. These are influences from the very first nurture via development of general abilities and skills, to specific training and the learning of the particular techniques and tactics of a sport. Environmental influences are based in part on chance and luck. Successful skiers have favorable genetic predispositions and are often raised close to a skiing resort with good coaches and instructors. No elite performance however comes about without own strong effort. Athletes realize their talent through hard training over many years. Competitive sport is primarily meritocratic in kind.

The critical question is whether all kinds of inequalities linked to performance (including those caused by performance-enhancing drugs) are of relevance in skiing, or whether some inequalities ought to be eliminated or compensated for. In what follows, and based on previous work (Loland 2001, 2009), I will critically review two main positions in this respect.

The thin interpretation

From the perspective of the thin interpretation of athletic performance, ‘anything goes’. Within the competition itself there are rules to be kept such as those against hands in soccer, or kicking in handball, or using violence against other athletes in cross-country skiing events. These are constitutive rules that make up the sport. Without constitutive rules athletic performances cannot be evaluated at all.

Restrictions on performance enhancement outside of competitions, however, for instance in the form of amateur rules or the current ban on drugs, are considered irrelevant. In the thin interpretation sport is seen to be about the maximization of human performance potential with whatever means athletes find appropriate. The view is often linked to anti-paternalistic conceptualizations of autonomy and individual freedom and responsibility (Tamburrini 2000).

On the critical side thin interpretations can be seen as sociologically naive and contra-productive (Loland, 2001). No athlete is an island with full freedom to choose but a part of complex social networks and power relations. Without out-of-competition regulations, athletes easily become even more dependent upon external expertise than what is the situation today. The control over and responsibility for...