The toxic doxa of “clean sport” and IOC’s and WADA’s quest for credibility

Abstract

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have been held accountable for the “Russian crisis,” a major state-sponsored doping scandal, which began in 2014. The scandal has brought intense scrutiny on the IOC’s and WADA’s efficiency in curbing doping. This paper argues that their impaired credibility should not only be explained through their objective failure in preventing doping in Russia but can be mainly understood through an analysis of their staged promises of clean sport. This study relies on the analysis of a corpus of official policy documents from the IOC and WADA over the last two decades, several media sources, and field-notes from our “participant-as-observer” role during several anti-doping meetings. In the first part of this article, we argue that to convince the audiences of their commitment to the fight against doping, WADA and the IOC collaborate to create a “team presentation” in which “impression management” is used to stage promises of a strong anti-doping doxa. The second part of the article elaborates that performances are vulnerable and complicated. Because of its scale, the Russian crisis disrupted the IOC’s and WADA’s dramaturgy, revealing their individual agendas and their rivalries over the control of the doxa, with the IOC seeking to protect its power and WADA trying to remain a “trust device.” Finally, the article shows that the IOC and WADA trapped themselves within their own staged discourse because of their divisions and their outbidding promises of clean sport, which turned ineffective and even “toxic.” We conclude that such a scenario was detrimental to the overall anti-doping efforts and the subsequent credibility of these organizations.

Dealing with doping. A plea for better science, governance and education

“…After two decades, the question is by how much these achievements cover the objectives stated at the inception of WADA and what the outlook is for the coming decades. Several scholars analyzed the situation at WADA's 20-year anniversary and, on balance, tended to be rather critical [38][39][40][41] .…”

“…All this is done by a system that is not transparent and increasingly extends itself into the lives of less competitive and even amateur athletes and beyond -without any independent body checking and weighing these regulations against existing universal human or national rights, including privacy. Although perhaps initially somewhat effective, the system may now have become unsustainable and runs the risk of also losing some of the positive effects it has had in sport 39 .…”

“…General public opinion does not want competitive sport to become a contest of sophisticated drug regimens but wants to continue to believe that talent, courage, and grit are the way to merited success. Sport actors believe that sports rankings (e.g., medals, world records) are valuable and constitute the main capital within the field 39 . Anti-doping, therefore, strives to provide the spectatorship with competition that is considered fair.…”

“…Sport actors believe that sports rankings (e.g., medals, world records) are valuable and constitute the main capital within the field. 39 Antidoping, therefore, strives to provide the spectatorship with competition that is considered fair. Tragically, however, by putting the bar too high (eradication of doping, clean athletes, clean Olympics) this proves impossible despite extraordinary (repressive) means, and, after each Olympics, the retesting of samples leads to medal reallocations, up to 10 years later.…”

Fight Against Doping as a Social Performance: The Case of the 2015–2016 Russian Anti-Doping Crisis

“…Second, a 'zero-tolerance policy' was a key message around 2007. The third discourse on 'clean athletes/sport' (Ohl et al, 2020) has been a motto in WADA and IOC communications since 2013.…”