From Anti-Doping to Clean Sport: Critical Reflections on a Changing Research, Policy and Practice Landscape

Doping in sport is not new; athletes have taken performance-enhancing substances since time immemorial. Despite advances in the detection-deterrence model, where individual athletes are targeted through standardized testing, and increased efforts to harmonize anti-doping policy and practice through revisions to the World Anti-Doping Code, doping continues to threaten sport by violating its underpinning values. Most recently, this threat has been fortified by serious allegations of systematic doping in Track and Field Athletics in Russia. Closer to home, 47 athletes and/or athlete support personnel are currently serving anti-doping rule violations. Sport doping is now such a regular feature of global news feeds that we must radically reconsider the value of the detection-deterrence approach for making sport drug-free. In this lecture, Susan considers how a mounting body of social science research supports this stance, as does the emerging discourse that favors replacing ‘anti-doping’ with ‘Clean Sport’. Allowing for doping having many facets, this lecture will explore the specific contribution of social psychology to contemporary understanding. In doing so, Susan will share examples of the research undertaken at Leeds Beckett University that have contributed to the evidence-base that has informed national, international and global anti-doping policy and practice. This is a timely issue. Under the 2015 World Anti-Doping Code, the provision of education and information to athletes and athlete support personnel is now mandatory for anti-doping organizations. In light of this requirement, Susan will explore the premise that the challenges of doping in sport cannot be met without engaging key stakeholders, and the public at large, in a renewed enthusiasm for genuinely preventive, system-based, approaches. However, she will caution that progress in this regard will stall if the astonishing disparity between funding allocations for detection-deterrence and education remains. Indeed, Susan will reflect on the argument, put forward by scholars and policy makers, that existing financing and resourcing go a long way in explaining the limited progress made in preventing doping in 21st century sport. At the same time, getting it right offers endless possibilities for developing innovative and novel Clean Sport education programmes. The lecture will conclude by highlighting future directions for undertaking research that combines stakeholder know-how with the rigor of academic study to develop collaborative solutions to address what is one of sports’ most pernicious challenges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpgJIg0dGxw