Action Replay: Best foot forward (2024)

The Action Replay column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May the professional cyclist Lizzy Banks decided to retire from the sport, although UK Anti-Doping found that she was in no way responsible for the traces of banned substances found in a positive doping test. However, her life had been ‘torn apart’ after she was suspended for ten months, during which the prospect of a two-year ban hung over her, even though nobody claimed that she had knowingly taken the drugs. The ordeal had cost her around £40,000, quite apart from the mental stress.

Drugs are banned in sport, precisely because they work and can improve performance, sometimes markedly so. An endurance sport such as cycling is particularly prone to doping. As the Banks case shows, athletes are susceptible to being charged even though innocent. They may have to be very careful about what they order at a restaurant or coffee shop in order to avoid ingesting something that’s banned, and have to set aside an hour each day when they may be randomly tested.

And there is a backlash, with proposals for a so-called Enhanced Games to take place sometime, somewhere, with no rules against doping in place. This is intended as a kind of rival to the Olympics, though it is not clear if it will ever get off the ground. The website enhanced.org describes it as ‘the Olympics of the future’, and claims that sport is safer without drug testing.

Of course, all sportspeople go to lengths to improve their performance, from becoming fitter to adopting better techniques of whatever kind. They may also use better equipment, but this can lead to problems too. In 2020 World Athletics banned the Alphafly running shoes produced by Nike, which had carbon plates and sizeable midsoles and were claimed to increase speed (eg, in marathon running) by 3 percent. Athletes wearing them had dominated medal-winning at some events.

Such kit is sometimes described as ‘technological doping’, and the World Anti-Doping Agency can ban items considered to be ‘against the spirit of the sport’. For instance, a swimsuit that increased buoyancy was banned in 2009 by swimming’s governing body. Nike has since created a revised Vaporfly shoe that seems to have gained official acceptance; it costs £200 or more. Tennis rackets may be claimed to be ‘the best’, and the interpretation of this will vary depending on a player’s ability.

Sportswear companies of course compete against each other to produce and sell the most supposedly efficient shoes and so on. Competition in the capitalist marketplace echoes that in the sports arena. Sometimes the line between what is deemed acceptable and what is not can be very uncertain and maybe arbitrary.

Paul Bennett

Voice From The Back: Sport in a sick society (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sport in a sick society

“To amuse or recreate oneself, by active exercise in the open air; to take part in some game or play; to frolic or gambol.” The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. That is an adequate description of sport before the advent of capitalism, it is wholly inappropriate today. Jose Canseco the former batsman of the Oakland Athletics tells all in his expose of modern baseball, Juiced. “Why did I take steroids? The answer is simple. Because myself and others had no choice if we wanted to continue playing. Because Major League Baseball did nothing to take it out of sport,” he wrote. “Before they were sworn in, the committee heard emotional testimonies from parents of promising young baseball stars who had killed themselves while taking steroids. Health officials say that suicidal tendencies are one of the side-effects of steroid use” The Times (18 March). Just another example of capitalism destroying everything it touches, even baseball.

Blessed are the poor

“A bishop in eastern Spain has cut his parish priests’ stipend by 30 per cent after his dioceses lost up to €10 million (£6.8 million) on the stock market. He advised them to find the difference by putting collection boxes in their churches” The Times (1 April). Really good thinking, Bishop. But how does that fit up with the usual homilies you give the poor about “do not thirst after the material things of life”. It seems that it is a good idea for priests to tell punters but not necessarily a good one for the punters to tell the priests.

Welcome to these refugees

A great deal of publicity is given to desperate workers travelling half the world to get a job in the UK but little is said of another group of immigrants who are welcomed with open arms to these shores. “Seven of the top richest billionaires in Britain come from overseas, according to the Sunday Times Rich List out tonight. The survey reveals that foreigners outnumber Britons at the top of the list, with steel tycoon  Lakshmi Mittal topping the table with an estimated wealth of £14.8 billion. Chelsea Football Club owner and oil magnate Roman Abramovich drops to second place, but his wealth has held steady over the year at £7.5 billion” The Scotsman (3 April). Why do we never hear about restrictions of movement or of the introduction of Identity Cards for these people?

A nice little earner

The death of the Pope was supposed to fill the world with grief according to the newspapers, but there was one group of entrepreneurs that were rubbing their hands in glee. “With Pope John Paul II’s funeral expected to draw up to 2 million people, at least one consumer group is accusing cafes, restaurants, grocery stores and hotels near St Peter’s Square of boosting prices to gouge tourists and pilgrims. … Orlando Salvio, a waiter at a restaurant near St Peter’s. said businesses  are eager to cash in.  ‘Here everyone is happy – they’re sad in a way, but happy in another,’ he said. ‘Obviously, the business owners are the happy one'” Yahoo News 4 April). A papal death can be good business for some.

Now he tells us

Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Wednesday that oil was one of the reasons for the US-led invasion Iraq, a Swedish news agency reported. did not think so at first. But the US is incredibly dependent on oil,’ news agency quoted Blix as saying at a security seminar in Stockholm. ‘They wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market became too hard'” Canoe network: Cnews (6 April). So eventually a spokesman for the capitalist class gets round to saying what socialists have been saying all along.

Dying for profit

“The drug industry received a pasting this week and it wasn’t entirely undeserved. MPs accused it of cultivating a reliance on medicine in the UK by over-promoting products and trying to find new markets by categorising more and more people as in need of treatment. … we have been sold the idea that a drug is miraculous, only to be scared silly months later and told that might kill us. The recent withdrawal of anti-arthritis drug Vioxx, once hailed doctors as safe and now linked to thousands of deaths, is a case in point” The Times (9 April). “Over-promoting” and finding new markets” is looked upon as good marketing strategy inside capitalism. few deaths is hardly going to stop the drive for bigger and bigger profits. Sorry about your mother, by the way.

Action Replay: Pressure to Compete (2012)

The Action Replay column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lance Armstrong was never actually caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. Rather, the cyclist simply gave up fighting the allegations that he had done so. Regardless of the truth of the situation, this latest development is a reminder of the role of drug-taking in many sports.

There were plenty of earlier examples, but large-scale taking of drugs to improve performance probably goes back at least to WWII, when many soldiers took amphetamines and anabolic steroids to boost their alertness and aggression. It did not really become an issue in sport until 1967, when the International Olympic Committee began to ban drugs, though full-scale testing only started in 1972. In the former state capitalist countries of Eastern Europe, doping had become a kind of standard procedure.

Of course, you might well ask the question, what is wrong with doping? And how does it differ from following an appropriate diet, consuming energy drinks, using the very latest kit and clothing that are intended to make you run faster, and so on? The official answer is that, quite apart from wanting sport to look ‘clean’ for spectators, many drugs are dangerous. Cycling, which as an extreme endurance sport is particularly open to doping, has seen a number of deaths from taking erythropoietin, which increases the red blood cell count. Anabolic steroids can have side effects such as acne and impotence in men, and hair loss in women. Some Paralympic athletes actually give themselves electric shocks to boost their blood pressure. However, even legal gym supplements that boost your protein may lead to kidney damage.

As for why athletes risk their health and even their lives by taking drugs, the answer lies in the money and the fame, not to mention the pressure from coaches and national associations. There is an ongoing race between those who organise doping and those who devise new testing procedures, with neither side able or willing to stand still. The priorities of a system based on competition speak for themselves. And, as so often, human intelligence and ingenuity are put to ultimately pointless uses.

Paul Bennett