family duties, and limiting financial, educational and career opportunities, so perhaps risking one’s long term health is just another one of these sacrifices. The response to this is generally about coercion. Athletes often start at a young age and are highly influenced by those around them such as coaches and managers. If the coach promotes a product or substance then there is substantial pressure on these athletes to accept this advice. Unscrupulous coaches may not care too much about the long-term health of their athletes if their athletes are excelling at their sport. The other response is that though there may be some athletes that are willing to suffer ill-health in order to obtain victory, there are many other athletes that are not, and it will be these athletes that will be forced out of the sport because they will find themselves at a disadvantage. Weighing up the right to autonomy against the protection from harm is always difficult but WADA believe it is more important to protect athletes from potential harm.
Performance Enhancing Sport in many ways is dependent on the enhancement of performance – we expect and relish records to be broken and players to demonstrate better skills. So the enhancement of performance cannot be bad in itself. The last few decades have witnessed the creation of thousands of jobs in performance analysis, sports psychology, nutrition, strength and conditioning, recovery and therapy, and many other areas; all of which are supposed to enhance performance. This suggests that it isn’t the enhancement of performance that is morally problematic but rather the way it is done; particularly the way it affects fairness and justice. 60 December 2013
A few years ago, records in swimming were being obliterated. The cause was a new type of swimsuit that increased buoyancy and reduced drag. There wasn’t anything physically harmful about these swimming costumes but it caused embarrassment to the governing body, FINA, because it highlighted a problem with the sport of swimming. It was obvious that these records were created not from better swimmers but from better technology. This is the crux of this issue. There is a perception that performance is (or at least should be) about natural talent, hard work and the ability of the human body. Not technology. If sport is about our natural human capacities then records set through the adoption of particular technology become meaningless. Swimmers might as well fit motorised propellers to their feet. The difficulty that governing bodies face, is in deciding where the limit lies between fair and unfair performance. The problem with the polyurethane swimsuits was that were only available to a handful of sponsored athletes which left others at a clear disadvantage. There is a concern that this criterion seems to be dealing with issues that is outside of WADA’s jurisdiction, i.e. it is not about doping but technology in general. Nevertheless, WADA have provided rulings on performance enhancing technology that is not harmful, such as the use of hypoxic chambers and prosthetic blades.
‘Spirit of Sport’ There may be some substances or methods that are harmful to health but not performance enhancing (e.g. some recreational drugs), or performance enhancing but not harmful to health (e.g. the polyurethane swimsuits), and therefore on their own would not warrant a ban by WADA. So WADA have also included the additional criterion of ‘spirit of sport’. This provides the rationale for the existence of WADA itself as it