Sport Ethics

Abstract

Doping in elite-sport is a topical issue that polarizes public opinion. This dissertation outlines crucial, fundamental questions that go unasked in general discourse about doping in elite-sport and that through being answered will allow the debate to be had at more meaningful level. 

This interdisciplinary dissertation draws widely on: scientific journal entries, textbooks, multimedia and official documents in subjects of biochemistry, biology, psychology and ethics.

A comprehensive, balanced, inter-disciplinary approach to the research that was used to form this dissertation allows for a multifactorial coverage of the issues addressed and means that, at the very least, the conclusions made have some equity.

This​ dissertation examines include: what doping is and who decides, the (not so) valiant institutional structures through which doping detection is currently undertaken, and what the current prevalence of doping is likely to be.  It aims to answer two questions: (i) is the playing field levelled by the current paradigm of doping prohibition? and (ii) in this human world, there are many examples of ideals that only fitfully work in reality, but is this an argument for not making the effort to put ideals into practice?

Through this research it can be concluded that doping is far more pervasive that WADA's statistics would suggest, doping detection methods are unfit for purpose, it is questionable whether the true motives for those who organise testing are more political than egalitarian and there are great genetic dissimilarities between elite-athletes (who are, as a group, already genetically superior to the rest of the population in terms of athletic potential).

All of these conclusions highlight that elite-sport has never and probably will never be an even playing field.  Looking forward, there are far-reaching moral and political implications for organised testing.

This paper contains a brief reflection on ethics of sport, on the subject of doping and the application of new genetic technologies in sport. The debate surrounding the use of new genetic technologies to increase the performance of athletes, meets two important currents in sports ethics: The Transhumanist and bioconservatives. To accomplish my goal, I will Tamburrin Claudio's opinion for Transhumanism representative of genetic technologies in sport: gene doping. Then I will focus on the Bioconservative posture of  Robert. L. Simon,  a position regarding doping. And once seen both positions, I will draw a conclusion as to address both ethical problems from a sports ethics.

Traditionally, acts of sportsmanship have been upheld as worthy of praise. The purpose of this paper is to discern whether Bernard Suits’ Grasshopper -- in "The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia" -- would share this approval. The paper begins with a conceptual analysis of good sportspersonship. From this, four action categories are identified including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, not trying, and lusory self-handicapping. A strategy for evaluation is derived from the Grasshopper’s theory. Game-playing is defined as action reflecting lusory attitude acknowledgement. Game-spoiling is introduced as action demonstrating lusory attitude abandonment. Three of the four actions categories are characterized as game-spoiling including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, and not trying. It is concluded that genuine good sportspersonship is characterized solely by altruistic forms of lusory self-handicapping.