This research report focuses on the culture of young Belgian, French and Swiss road cyclists aged 18 to 23, on the way to becoming professionals or who are already professionals. The main goal is to understand and compare the effects of various forms of socialization of young cyclists on their attitude towards doping. This stage of the career has been largely neglected although it constitutes an essential phase in understanding the consumption of prohibited substances. Indeed, this young cyclist’s exposure to a new environment and a new professional approach is rather overwhelming, offering both a potential career and profits, and attendant risks. The goal of this research is to understand whether the relationship with pharmacology and doping evolves and if approaches to organization and support for the young athletes have an impact on their tendency to consume these substances. In particular, we hope to learn about the effects of interactions amongst cyclists and the various groups supporting them (peers, former cyclists, coaches, managers, and doctors) on their level of information, and their know‐how, as well as on the standards and
values adopted during this phase of professional socialization.
Conclusion
Actors in the cycling milieu describe very significant changes in discourse that seem to reflect an evolution in the way doping is perceived. The transformation of modes of support by teams deliberately invested in the battle against doping has clear consequences. In well supported teams, doping is no longer a collective practice, as it used to be. Therefore, the cyclist culture
has changed significantly but this does not mean that doping has been eradicated and that the temptation to consume these substances does not exist. Yet the practice of doping is certainly rare for “strongly supportive” teams and this can only be an individual practice in other teams. These transformations in the
cyclist culture do not at all indicate that other teams’ practices, especially in other countries, have evolved in the same way, nor that older cyclists in the most highly ranked professional teams have changed in a similar fashion.
Finally, nothing guarantees that a shift to a team with different attitudes towards doping will prevent cyclists from consuming illegal substances. The approaches to coaching, habits of consumption of legal substances, the perception of doping, and the insecurity
of the cyclist’s professional condition are factors that, in the least supportive teams, are likely to lead to a perception of doping according to a range of ambivalent standards.
