ABSTRACT
The war on drugs in sport has intensified since the late 1990s when the Festina affair during the 1998 Tour de France became one of the precursors for the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (1999), which duly coordinated the globalised fight for clean sport through the World Anti-Doping Code (2003). A series of problems have since emerged as direct and logical consequences of these new strategies. Inadvertent consequences which highlight the complex nature of anti-doping crisis include: athletes exploiting the rigour of the testing system; advantages going to athletes who can afford the best doping doctors; increased numbers of genuinely innocent athletes being punished; athletes’ privacy and dignity being abused due to the apparent need to observe urination and to locate them for testing 365 days a year; and the 10-year retesting rule means that we cannot know the results of an event until that period has passed, leading to the end of meaningful winning and thus the end of sport. These problems are the inevitable outcome of a reactionary, fear-based, top-down policy which has severe consequences for athletes. The outcomes are at times the opposite of the stated aims of protecting the level playing field, the health of athletes and the spirit of sport.
