Moral entrepreneurship and doping cultures in sport

In this article, the fight against doping has been analyzed as an ongoing process of social definition. It is dependent on the development of power relations within and outside the world of sport. To analyze these dependencies, I identified a variety of important doping cultures in sport and studied the development of the power relations between the supporters of these cultures during the second half of the twentieth century. Doping culture is defined as the typical attitudes and practices relating to doping within a sector of the world of sport. I distinguish an official Olympic doping culture and more secret cultures in cycling, weightlifting, track and field and American professional team sports. I analyzed how the Olympic battle against doping became integrated in the American War on Drugs. The relevance of discussing doping in terms of doping cultures is that drug use should not be considered simply as an act of individual cheating, but as an institutionalized activity in certain sectors of sport. The existence of a culture presupposes a certain degree of organization of its participants. Those who wish to fight doping in sports should try to attack this organization. They should not just test individual athletes for doping. On top of this they should look for those who produce and distribute the drugs and those who teach the athletes to use them.