Doping in Cycling: Realism, Antirealism and Ethical Deliberation

Professional road cycling in general and the Tour de France in particular have a tarnished reputation as far as the illegal and illegitimate use of performance enhancing drugs is concerned. Numerous positive dope tests each year are, for some, testament to the insidious corruptness of cyclists, their entourage, and the practice community. For others, it attests to both the strength of the commitment to drug free sport and the rigor of the processes implemented to achieve it. In a recent interview on British TV, Mark Cavendish a winner of 6 Tour de France stages in 2009, claimed that no other sport was as committed to clean competition as road cycling(1). Although standard antidoping arguments have been presented, discussed, and widely rehearsed in the literature, consensus on the matter has not been reached neither in the community of sports ethicists nor, as I will suggest, in the practice community of elite road cyclists. In this paper I explore a possible defense of doping in elite cycling which requires us to think carefully about common assumptions about both the nature and purpose of doping. In particular I examine the way in which both realists and antirealists might deal with a particular prodoping argument.