ABSTRACT
Competitive sport, both at high and lower performance levels, represents an ethically contested field. Sport represents ideal values; fairness and equality of opportunity, mutual respect between participants, winning and losing with dignity, and human excellence. Ideals of fair and just conduct seem to have followed competitive games since their origins. References to fair play were also used as an exclusionary mechanism by the upper classes to avoid ‘professionals’; that is, people from the working classes, in ‘their’ sport. Fairness is a moral obligation on rule adherence arising when we voluntarily engage in a rule-governed practice. Fair play implies a view of athletes as free and responsible moral agents in a virtuous pursuit of human excellence. In the public sphere, the use of performance-enhancing drugs implies a violation of what in most sports is a commonly accepted ban and is a violation against the fairness norm.
