Strijd tegen doping

Samenvatting

Fighting Doping. In this article, I follow the symbolic interactionist idea that one has to study the social process in which an act is defined as deviant or criminal, to understand why people who commit that act are considered as deviants or criminals. Applied to the fight against doping in sports, I analyze three processes that have been fundamental in defining doping as a deviant or even criminal act. These processes have their origin in the 1950s. Before that time, doping in sports was used, but not controlled or punished. During the Cold War, representatives of capitalist and communist countries questioned the value of the performances of the athletes of the opposite side by suggesting that they used doping. To contain this ideological struggle and to keep up the good name of sport the International Olympic Committee had to forbid and control the use of doping. In professional cycling, I traced a more liberal attitude toward doping. During the 1950s and the 1960s the medicalization of the use of doping was a serious possibility; however, under the influence of the development in Olympic sports, this possibility did not materialize. Yet in professional cycling a relatively liberal attitude toward doping remained. Every tendency toward a more liberal attitude toward doping in sports in general was suppressed after the American government, in 1991, defined doping in sports as part of the general social problem of illegal drug use. 1 Table, 35 References. Adapted from the source document.