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"We are not sportsmen, we are professionals": professionalism, doping and deviance in elite sport

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TLDR
In this article, the authors explore how these contradictory norms are reflected in today's professional and amateur riders' attitudes to doping and illustrate how the entrepreneurial attitudes of the athletes have developed in different directions: while amateurs came to regard the professionals' attitude to sports as normative, the professionals had to submit to the norms of the amateurs in order to be allowed to compete in important competitions.
Abstract
As a part of its legacy of being the first genuine modern sport, cycling has a proactive attitude to pharmacological developments. This attitude, however, is in conflict with the norms and values of both the wider society in general and the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) historical emphasis on the amateur ideal in particular. As such, riders who use banned substances are considered deviants or pariahs. Using Danish elite cycling as a case study, the paper will explore how these contradictory norms are reflected in today's professional and amateur riders' attitudes to doping. The paper concludes by illustrating how the entrepreneurial attitudes of the athletes have developed in different directions: While amateurs came to regard the professionals' attitude to sports as normative, the professionals had to submit to the norms of the amateurs in order to be allowed to compete in important competitions.

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Journal ArticleDOI

A qualitative analysis of the factors that protect athletes against doping in sport

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the protective factors against performance enhancing drug (PED) use in sport and identify personal and situational factors that protect competitive athletes against using PEDs in sport.
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How social fear of drugs in the non-sporting world creates a framework for doping policy in the sporting world

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the broader social context has long inflected upon doping administrators and doping policy and that this has resulted in a relative mirroring of policy formation discourses and trajectory found in the non-sporting world.
Journal ArticleDOI

The doping mindset—Part I: Implications of the Functional Use Theory on mental representations of doping

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the dominant quantitative research paradigm follows the legal/moral route, and the incongruence between reality and the faulty assumptions about reality limits the ecological validity of the research findings and argue for progressing quantitative social cognition research with new models, measurement tools and methodologies that shift away from the dominance of moralistic frames.
Journal ArticleDOI

The new front in the war on doping: Amateur athletes

TL;DR: It is shown that drug use in sport can be understood as a new front in the war on drugs, with some extreme measures and many negative unintended consequences, and it is argued that amateur athletes require a separate anti-doping policy focused on minimising harms of use.
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Inside athletes' minds: Preliminary results from a pilot study on mental representation of doping and potential implications for anti-doping

TL;DR: Doping estimates by user groups showed mixed results, suggesting that doping had more in common with the ergogenic nutritional supplement domain than the illicit drug domain, and refining the peculiarity of the mental representation of doping with a larger study sample is warranted.
References
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Book

Outsiders; studies in the sociology of deviance

TL;DR: One of the most groundbreaking sociology texts of the mid-20th century, Howard S. Becker's Outsiders is a thorough exploration of social deviance and how it can be addressed in an understanding and helpful manner.
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Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport

TL;DR: Hoberman argues that the example of Ben Johnson was the logical outcome of a sporting ethos which seeks ever greater speed and strength - the creation of a man-machine - and the financial corruption of the Olympic ethos as mentioned in this paper.
Book

A History of Drug Use in Sport: 1876 - 1976: Beyond Good and Evil

TL;DR: In this article, sport, drugs and society, 1876-1918, sport, Drugs and Society 2. Doping and the Rise of Modern Sport, 18 76-19 18 3. The Science Gets Serious, 1920-1945 Part 2 4. Amphetamines and Post War Sport, 1945-1976 5. The Steroids Epidemic, 1945 -1976 6. Dealing with the Scandal: Anti-Doping and New Ethics of sport, 1945 − 1965 7. Science, Morality and Policy: the Modernisation of anti-doping, 1965
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Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping

TL;DR: This book discusses Testosterone as a Way of Life, Hormone Therapy for Athletes, and the Doping of Everyday Life Athletic Doping and the Human Future.
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