ABSTRACT
Anti-doping research largely focuses on the factors that produce doping behaviour or on athletes that are either already on the path to doping and the methods for changing existing illicit behaviour. The emphasis on doping exists despite athletes’ overwhelming desire to do their sport without performance-enhancing substances. Less research investigates why clean athletes stay clean, especially in sports such as cycling where doping use once pervaded the sporting culture. Though competing ‘clean’ has emerged as the one of the targets of anti-doping and ‘clean’ features in the language of educational programs, the existing knowledge base is overly problem-focused on athletes’ deficits. Positive psychology could provide a corrective shifting the focus from doping to clean behaviour. Positive psychology studies conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions. In cycling, a positive psychology frame posits that anti-doping is best comprehended by a clear understanding of doping and clean behaviour with a focus on the well-being of athletes and the conditions, strengths and virtues that allow clean athletes to thrive. Awareness of clean behaviour and the associated structures that sustain clean athletes could identify how clean individuals and communities thrive. If a goal of anti-doping is to create sporting spaces where clean athletes are protected and valued by athletes themselves − and not solely enforced by authorities − then the elevating of clean sport behaviour and the mechanisms that support it become a primary prevention effort to eradicate doping.
