Strengthening Athlete Power in Sport : A multidisciplinary review and framework / Alberto Carrio, Arnout Geeraert, Evie Ham, Andy Harvey, Alban Zohn, Mike McNamee (Ed.). - Aarhus : Play the Game; Danish Institute for Sports Studies, 2021

• ISBN978-87-93784-57-4

The project Strengthening Athlete Power in Sport (SAPIS) aimed at strengthening the influence and representation of athletes in the way that their sports organizations are governed and managed has released their first output.

The output, a literature review produced by the project’s academic partners, demonstrates that academic research on questions of athlete representation is limited. Therefore, to effectively capture what happens on the ground in terms of political structures and groups that promote athlete’s interests, in addition to scientific academic literature other documents have been included.  

The review is organized under the following headings: 

• Democracy and sports governance 
• Legitimacy of sports governance 
• Athletes and industrial relations 
• The special features of the sports sector 
• Athlete activism 
• The grey literature on athletes’ rights 

Understanding the Influence of Proximal Networks on High School Athletes’ Intentions to Use Androgenic Anabolic Steroids / Jules Woolf, Rajiv N. Rimal, Pooja Sripad. - (Journal of Sport Management 28 (2014) 1 (January); p. 8-20) 

• DOI: 10.1123/jsm.2013-0046

Abstract

Understanding what influences adolescent athletes is important for managers designing anti-doping initiatives. It is commonly assumed that elite athletes who dope influence adolescent athletes to similarly dope. Using the theory of normative social behavior, the effect of norms on adolescent athletes’ intentions to use steroids was examined. The social distance between respondents and the source of normative information was systematically varied to include four separate levels (friends, teammates, college athletes, professional athletes). Data were collected from 404 male adolescent athletes. Participants indicated their intentions to use steroids and their perceptions of descriptive and injunctive norms of referent others. Descriptive and injunctive norms were predictive of intentions to use steroids with the magnitude of explained variance greater with more proximal referents. Adolescent athletes’ intentions to use steroids are influenced by social norms. Moreover, the social distance of referents is consequential. Interventions strategies should incorporate teammates and friends, rather than professional athletes.

Androgenic anabolic steroid policy and high school sports : results from a policy Delphi study / J. Woolf, P. Swain. - (International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 6 (2014) 1; p. 89-106)

• DOI: 10.1080/19406940.2013.767852

Abstract

In this article, androgenic anabolic steroid policy targeted at American high school sports is investigated. In recent years several states have instituted androgenic anabolic steroid testing of high school athletes. These programmes have produced few positive tests and subsequently have been heavily criticized. A heterogeneous panel of sixteen experts was invited to debate the issue of steroid use among high school athletes using a policy Delphi method. The panel included executive managers from anti-doping organizations, academic researchers and advocates for steroid legalization. Panellists communicated their response to three rounds of questionnaires via e-mail. The dominant view expressed by the panel is that steroid use among high school athletes is likely underestimated and will increase in the future. Of concern were the quality of steroids consumed and the unintended consumption of steroids via tainted supplements. The panel was in near unanimous agreement that steroid abuse at this level needs to be addressed. However, the panel was divided on the ways in which doping policy should be implemented at the high school level. A small majority favoured the inclusion of drug testing of athletes. Those in favour of drug testing believed that educational efforts, while necessary, are insufficient to address this issue. Panellists stated that educational initiatives should be presented using a balanced approach that covers the positive and negative effects of steroids. Moreover, educational programmes need to emphasize alternative approaches to performance enhancement and include a moral education component. These issues were explored and the implications for policy discussed.

Does Legislating Against Doping in Sports Make Sense? Comparing Sweden and the U.S. Suggests Not / Johan Lindholm. - (Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal 13 (2013) 1 (Fall); p. 21-34)

Abstract

Both policy makers and sport stakeholders have fought against doping since the 1960’s but largely separately from each other. In light of recent events, political discussion, and academic debate, this article considers the expediency of using legislation to fight doping in sports. Building upon and comparing experiences in the U.S. and in Sweden, this article concludes that increased governmental involvement is undesirable from both the policy makers’ and the sport stakeholders’ perspectives. The reasons for this conclusion are, primarily, (i) that they are driven by different aims, (ii) that they differ in what they consider doping, (iii) that policy makers may push rules in sports in an unwanted direction, (iv) that expanded government involvement increases the likelihood of fundamental rights challenges to sport rules, and (v) that there are alternative ways of enhancing existing rules’ efficiency.

Keywords: Sports, Sports law, Doping, Fundamental rights, WADA, IOC, steroids, EPO, hGH

Ideology, Doping and the Spirit of Sport / Vincent Geeraets. - (Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 12 (2018) 3 (26 July); p. 255-271)

• DOI: 10.1080/17511321.2017.1351483

Abstract

The current World Anti-doping Code can be characterised as a tough approach to doping. In this paper we investigate how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) justifies this tough approach. To this end, WADA advances two justificatory arguments. It maintains, first, that protection of the spirit of sport warrants tough measures and, second, that athletes have voluntarily consented to the Code. We argue that in the way they are presented by WADA, neither of these arguments can withstand scrutiny. In the second part of the paper, we go on to show that these arguments are in fact ideological in nature. The specific aim of these arguments is not to be correct, but rather to distort social reality, because in this way they can be used to ward off any critical discussion of the Code. We conclude that WADA’s interest is to create a façade of justice, not in serving justice itself.

On the Compatibility of Brain Enhancement and the Internal Values of Sport / Alberto Carrio Sampedro, José Luis Pérez Triviño. - (Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 11 (2017) 3 (26 May); p. 307-322)

• DOI: 10.1080/17511321.2017.1320687
  
  

Abstract

Elite athletes are characterized by their high level of performance in sport. Since the very beginnings of sport, it has been understood that physical and physiological abilities influence the performance of athletes. Advances in scientific knowledge, especially sport psychology and neuroscience, seem to confirm this intuition and consequently it is possible to characterize elite athletes as having an extraordinary combination of physical and mental abilities. Techniques and substances that contribute to enhancing physical characteristics of athletes have also been well known for ages. But it is now possible to make use of other techniques and substances that not only enhance physical abilities but also cognitive capabilities, which seem to require greater consideration given their direct impact on the athlete’s brain. In this article, we examine two such techniques, cognitive enhancers and transcranial stimulators, and highlight the potential advantages and drawbacks that applying each one may have on sport. Given the relative novelty of these enhancement techniques and substances and the absence of conclusive evidence regarding their short- and long-term effects, we deem that their use ought to be strictly governed by cautionary principles. But due to that same lack of evidence, we believe that the possibility of examining the feasibility of applying these techniques to sport should not be denied.

The Ethics of Human Enhancement in Sport / Andy Miah. - (Handbook of Research on Technoethics. - 2009, Volume 1, Chapter 5, p. 69-84)

• ISBN13: 9781605660226|
• ISBN10: 1605660221|
• EISBN13: 9781605660233
• DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-022-6.ch005

Abstract

This chapter outlines a technoethics for sport by addressing the relationship between sport ethics and bioethics. The purpose of this chapter is to establish the conditions in which a technoethics of sport should be approached, taking into account the varieties and forms of technology in sport. It also provides an historical overview to ethics and policy making on sport technologies and contextualises the development of this work within the broader medical ethical sphere. It undertakes a conceptualisation of sport technology by drawing from the World Anti-Doping Code, which specifies three conditions that determine whether any given technology is considered to be a form of doping. In so doing, it scrutinizes the ‘spirit of sport’, the central mechanism within sport policy that articulates a technoethics of sport. The chapter discusses a range of sport technology examples, focusing on recent cases of hypoxic training and gene doping.

Drivers of illicit drug use regulation in Australian sport / Bob Stewart, Daryl Adair, Aaron Smith. - (Sport Management Review 14 (2011) 3; p. 237-245)

• DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2011.02.001

Abstract:

Most Australian sport stakeholders not only believe that government regulation is a good thing, but also assume that intervention in the drug-use problem will improve sport's social outcomes and operational integrity. In this paper we examine the regulation of illicit drug use in Australian sport through an interrogation of two cases: the Australian Football League and the National Rugby League. Using Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual frames of social field, capital, and habitus, we aim to secure a clearer understanding of the drivers of Australian sport's illicit drug regulations by (1) identifying those stakeholders who set the drug regulation agenda, (2) revealing the values and dispositions that underpin these regulations, and (3) explaining how dominant stakeholders go about sustaining their position and marginalising those stakeholders with opposing drug regulation claims. Our results show that Australian sport's drug-use regulations are driven by a set of values and dispositions that views sport as an instrument for shaping the character of its participants, and drugs as a threat to sport's moral fabric and good standing. The dominant stakeholders, comprising the Commonwealth Government, its sport agencies, and the major governing bodies for sport, imposed these values and dispositions on peripheral stakeholders by designing a drugs-in-sport social field that yielded capital and power to only those participants who endorsed these values and dispositions. Peripheral stakeholders – including players, their agents, and drug-treatment professionals – who mostly shared different values and dispositions, were sidelined, and denied the opportunity of adding to their already limited supplies of capital, power, and policy making influence.