This topic deserves its own blog post but here’s my take.
First of all, the underlying reasons behind doping need to be understood. The motivation is not just an athlete’s desire to improve their performance; there’s much more to it. Every sport is different and the role of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in each of them varies, but their use as a way to exploit athletes is rarely recognized. The past situation in cycling has been distinctly bad, but best illustrates the way PEDs are used by race organizers to exploit athletes. (I can't speak about today's cycling.)
Cyclists (in the TDF, at least) are ridiculously underpaid for the amount of risk they take, the wear and tear to their bodies, and the number of days they are required to compete without any time for recovery. Most professional runners, if they were forced to compete at a high level in 21 marathons over 23 days would likely feel justified in taking PEDs, or any type of illicit substance, just to get through it and try to limit the damage to their bodies. Obviously, the owners of the tour will be very resistant to the idea of changing the schedule to say, 42 days with alternating rest days, because the cost of hosting the event would double, and certainly don't want to be paying the riders more.
So how does one keep the pro cyclists from organizing into a union, or becoming stars with real power in the organization who will demand better conditions and more compensation? If you are the organizer, you tacitly encourage them to engage in some sort of illicit behavior that has the power to end their careers if publicized. The beauty of this arrangement (from the organizer’s perspective) is that the athlete doesn’t even realize they are being manipulated. They just think they’re cheating and blame themselves.
This tactic is not unique to sports, of course; the same power dynamic is played out in countless other areas as well, such as in work relationships, cults, incestuos families, and Epstein’s circle of compromised politicians. Youth gangs create group cohesion in similar ways. It’s not just the social capital that is built through violent initiation rites such as ‘jumping in’ (described in “Social Rituals of Pain: The Socio-Symbolic Meaning of Violence in Gang Initiations”), but the shared knowledge of incriminating information that binds the members of the group. To put it plainly, if I commit a crime that someone knows about, it creates a power asymmetry since the person can report me to an authority at any time. But if we commit the crime together, there is symmetry and I know that my co-conspirator will likely not snitch since they too potentially face the same consequences.
All this is to say that doping together on US Postal was the means through which silence for Lance and the other riders was obtained. It wasn’t just something that riders did for a competitive edge; rather it was the prerequisite lynchpin for being a member of the team. And it was done with the tacit approval of the organizers, since it allowed them to control the riders. The ironic thing is it would work even if the PED yielded no performance benefits, as long as it was illicit. Lance was not convicted for doping because he was careless. It was because he had acquired too much power and had, frankly, become a tiresome jerk, and the organizers wished no longer to protect him. Recall that the owner of the newspaper which outed him was the same party which owns the TDF.
A similar dynamic can be seen in the NBA. 80 games a season is too many to play in a healthy way, but is allowed to continue because it is just this enormous source of income for the league. It is understood that ticket sales are largely driven by the personalities on the team. If they don’t play, or if they only last a couple years before getting injured, it’s bad for business. So they pay the players large sums of money, and when they get injured or feel the need to “bulk up”, the league looks the other way with lax testing requirements negotiated by the union. The drugs aren’t just about obtaining a competitive edge, it’s about the players’ perceived survival in an exploitative situation. When I look at the long-term Kawhi situation, I see a dispute over which course of treatment was best and who got to decide. Maybe he didn’t want to risk his health with an aggressive use of PEDs, or maybe it was the other way around, but what you will have noticed is that no one can talk about it. The NFL, well.. they have issues, too.
The running world is a bit different because there is so little money at stake and because athletes largely compete and train as individuals. Yes, there are clubs, some of which seem a little shady, but the number of races a pro does per year is minuscule compared to other sports. Nevertheless, doping can still be used as a form of control by a coach (eg. Huntington U.) or similar authority figure, as well as a way to increase performance, or at least inspire the athlete with a placebo if the PED is not actually all that efficacious (eg. Triamcinolone Acetonide).
This is why I find all this shaming of athletes “caught doping” to be distasteful. More often than not, they’re caught up in something beyond their control or in desperate circumstances. So, what to do about it, particularly in running? On this point, I agree with Kara Goucher:
There needs to be a complete paradigm shift in how doping is regulated, in which punishment and shaming of athletes is eliminated and a grand bargain is instead implemented. It would provide that in return for their full cooperation in monitoring and catching the enablers of doping, athletes would receive as much immunity and as few negative consequences as possible if they test positive for a PED. Instead of acting immediately on a positive test, the testing authorities should launch discrete and comprehensive investigations to find the original source of such substances and all the people affected by them, particularly the enablers, even if it means allowing a few dopers to temporarily slip by with medals and prize money. Young athletes need to be taught very early on to recognize the warning signs of a cheating coach, and know how to reach the anti-doping authorities discretely, without fear of punishment. In addition, WADA should be testing every supplement and vitamin source around the world and working with food manufacturers to learn just how prevalent such substances are in their products.
Secondly, elite athletes should be taking and storing urine samples on a *daily* basis, and providing them in bulk to testing authorities periodically, who can then go back and further test their samples when something illicit shows up. To aid in this effort, pro athletes would take a daily (or weekly?) harmless pill containing a date-calibrated marker substance that will allow the testers to verify the samples were in fact taken from that individual at that particular time.
In my opinion, there may also be a place for transparent athletic competition in which the use of drugs by athletes to test their efficacy, safety, and performance is allowed, such that a robust clinical understanding of the drugs in healthy individuals could be gained and applied to those unhealthy individuals who really need them. And it would be great to finally measure PED performance gains in controlled settings on competing athletes. There would surely be surprises and breakthroughs.
However, even with the steps mentioned above, there is a problem. No matter how rigorous and advanced the testing procedures are, they will never be a match for a nation-state committed to circumventing them. This can happen not just through technical mastery (eg. testing and replicating marker substances), but through corruption of individuals and institutions, and as long as significant political power can be gained from a nation’s athletic success there will be ample motivation for government entities to help them cheat. Thus, in my reluctant opinion, the Olympics should be banned, which have been the handmaiden of authoritarian governments everywhere, and international competitions should be limited to single sport championships in order to reduce the temptation of governments to affect the outcomes by exploiting athletes.