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Introduction
Doping in sports is not a recent phenomenon. In the Tour de France, doping was common for most of the race's century-long history, during the first half quite openly. 1 2 In the 1960s, doping was more openly condemned; however, it was hardly combatted. Contemporary antidoping, labelled a 'war on doping', 3 is a recent development. Due to the 1998 Festina affair, which is when systematic doping was discovered on the Tour de France, 4 the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) now strives for the globalisation of antidoping across sports and the strengthening of surveillance and repression. This is ongoing and not an immediate success, as illustrated by the evidence that doping is still rife. 5
Contemporary media generally present doping as intrinsically evil, but the rationale behind the antidoping rule is neither self-evident nor universally accepted. There is an ongoing academic debate about the rule, its effects and alternatives (see refs. 6-11 ). This debate generally opposes two discourses, in their extreme versions, as follows: 'conservative' refers to the stance that defends strict prohibition enforced by surveillance and punitive repression 9 12 13 and 'liberal' refers to the stance that finds antidoping illogical and calls for the liberalisation of doping. 14-16 Kayser and Broers 17 find these positions defend non-realisable idealistic goals. The liberalisation of doping is deemed politically not feasible, while today's prohibition is unsuccessful since doping continues. 5 The latter is problematic because the objective of antidoping, eradicating doping to guarantee 'clean' champions, cannot be met because of limits to testing technology and surveillance density. 18 19 This imperative distinguishes doping from other transgressions for which such an ideal does not exist. Furthermore, antidoping has side effects. For example, the relegation of doping behaviour into clandestine behaviour, a consequence of repression, increases health risks (eg, greater risk-taking among competitive cyclists 20 or increased prevalence of HIV infection among fitness clients who inject anabolic steroids). 21 Thus, we can identify the following three concurrent dynamics: (1) doping poses potential harm to the user; (2) doping is insufficiently deterred by prohibitive policies and (3) the risk to the user is exacerbated by prohibitive policies. 22 This is very similar to the effects of the repression of illicit recreational drugs. 23 Nevertheless, under pressure from...