Knowledge of doping: how athletes learn about doping rules and practices

[Extract] Doping by athletes remains one of the most widespread (Bricknell, 2015) and hardest to eradicate forms of corruption in sport (Cycling Independent Reform Commission, 2015). Given the important cultural role that sport occupies in many countries, in the last decade there has been a proliferation of social-science-based academic research on anti-doping-related themes. Despite this apparent progress, the field remains a disparate body of work of questionable relevance to the initial aim of preventing doping (Lane, 2014). Rather, many articles openly challenge the legitimacy of anti-doping policies, advocating positions that promote the values of doping, or the need for a harm-reduction policy whereby doping is no longer sanctioned and medical practitioners oversee usage. The social science literature has thus become an ideological battlefield. In large part this attack on both antidoping policy and authorities has occurred because the rationale for anti-doping in sport is often poorly articulated, and also because the possibility of actually winning the war on doping seems increasingly unlikely