ABSTRACT
Athletes Whereabouts Information demands that ‘athletes who have been identified by their International Federation or National Anti-Doping Organization for inclusion in a Registered Testing Pool shall provide accurate, current location information’. As from 1 January 2009, this means that elite level athletes have to report on their out-of-competition whereabouts 24 h per day and 7 days a week. This kind of total surveillance requires active participation of athletes, starting with their signature allowing anti-doping authorities to reach them anytime and anywhere. This instrument of control has been discussed from moral and legal points of view, especially as potential human rights violation, and with conclusions which either support or criticize the instrument. This article seeks to contribute to another topic: Why did anti-doping control in elite sport develop in such a way that it demands measures which would be unacceptable if introduced by any other state or international authority? There are two main reasons: moralization and the special kind of precariousness of sport work. Moralization can be detected in many areas of social life, as morality’s subordination to claims for control and eradication of evil, and its result is subordination of legality to morality: that is what happened in sport, starting from ‘war on doping’ and ‘zero-tolerance’ politics which are both typical signs of moralization. Precariousness is a situation in which increasing numbers of workers are engaged in insecure, casualized or irregular labour. Sport professionals found themselves in precarious situation much earlier than all the other professionals because of the nature and limits of their profession. What is special in their working conditions is, however, that they at the same time represent labour force and product, and this product is their own body together with their body’s abilities. Antidoping control starts from their precarious position: they do not have a choice but to accept its demands because their job depends on it. However, they are not only tested as labour force, but also as commodities, as in the quality of food and other goods that have to be clear and healthy. For commodities, of course, human rights do not apply.
