ABSTRACT
The intensification of the campaign against doping over the past ten years has left its marks on the attitudes of athletes. It is evident, not least in cycling, that the silence of times past no longer helps to keep the doping issue out of the media spotlight. With the huge amount of attention devoted to the phenomenon, attempts to play down cases of doping no longer work. There is a big difference between the reception of Paul Kimmage’s book Rough Ride (1998) when it first came out in 1990 and the way such confessions and revelations would be received today. Kimmage describes the doping situation in cycling as an insider. He confesses his own initiation as a doper and he even mentions the name of a rider, whom he saw charge himself in a race. Today such a revelation would undoubtedly hit the headlines, whereas in 1990 it went almost unnoticed. High-profile revelations together with the media’s cultivation of doping
into a self-contained area of news have given the public the impression that doping is the rule rather than the exception among top-class athletes in certain sports. In other words they have become usual suspects. As suggested in the previous chapter, it is doubtful whether this role has improved the athletes’ moral standards. It is true that a number of them have begun to speak out and to openly declare their support for the anti-doping campaign. It has become common to keep a healthy distance from competitors who use doping. At the same time, however, it is a fact that several of those who have publicly condemned the use of doping have themselves been caught with banned substances in their bodies. This arouses the suspicion that the new line being taken may represent a new strategy – a new posture – but not an alteration in fundamental attitudes. And in so far as it can be said to be an expression of a change in attitude, it is far from certain that that change is in the favour of the anti-doping campaign. In any event, it is not unknown for people who are treated with mistrust to tend to begin to live up to it (Becker 1973).
