ABSTRACT
This chapter’s purpose is to understand what kind of changes have occurred in the use of drugs in cycling from the 1990s to 2018. It analyses professional cycling as a culture and tries, through a sociological lens, to see if the culture of doping is reproduced, or not, within the teams. The results of a series of observations allow us to discern important cultural changes. Most of the teams we had access to do not contribute directly to the recurrence of doping culture. Cultural norms that guide the production of performance have changed a great deal in these teams. However, teams’ staff and riders did not become suddenly different because of a more ‘ethical’ generation; they mostly experienced this cultural turn because of external pressures. Although public opinion is still defiant towards cycling teams and anti-doping, it is clear that they played a key role in those changes. However, there still exists a diversity of team culture, and some of the team may still be incited to doping, indirectly, by being in a grey-zone or by deliberately ignoring what the riders do. We conclude by underling the key role that teams can play in preventing certain types of doping and the necessity for teams to be more aware of their social responsibility.
