Where is the frontier between integrity in sport and anti-doping if it exists?

Abstract

The World Athletics Federation founded the Athletics Integrity Unit in April 2017 in an effort to create the “right frameworks for each and every athlete to succeed.” More recently, the Anti-doping Switzerland Foundation was rebranded as Swiss Sport Integrity to provide a “fresh and modern image for a fair, clean, and credible sport.” This exemplifies a profound need to step back and give clean sport initiatives and anti-doping efforts a wider perspective. Although the narrative of competition integrity has returned to the heart of sports in recent years, the issue is in fact not new. Indeed, cheaters were already pursued and sanctioned during ancient games, and some were even punished by notorious penalties. Thus, excavations in Olympia allowed, for example, the discovery of 16 pedestals of statues, known as the Zanes, located at the entrance of the stadium. These statues were erected with the money from the fines imposed by the judges on athletes violating the rules of the competitions, and their location was explicitly intended to deter any cheating attempt since any athlete, before entering the stadium, had to pass in front of the line of Zanes. In the wake of the Festina scandal, the world of sporting events initially devoted itself to the fight against doping. WADA was established as a result, and the UNESCO-sponsored International Convention against Doping in Sport went into effect. Therefore, research capacity in the field has considerably strengthened in both biology and the social sciences. However, the pursuit of a dishonest-free sporting world cannot be restricted to doping. According to the UN, in 2021, there were 1,700 billion illegal bets on sporting events (1). Even within international sports federations, corruption cases have led to investigations and arrests. For example, as part of FIFAgate, nine FIFA officials were charged in 2015 at the request of the FBI (2). The national level is not exempt from criticism either. In 2022, Hockey Canada was at the center of a major scandal with the discovery of a federation fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse by national team players. This led to the creation of a Sport Integrity Commissioner (3). We also cannot ignore the allegations of sexual violence leveled against the president of the French Football Federation (4) or those that led to the resignation of the president of the French Handball Federation (5). These repeated scandals have led to certain legislative or institutional changes. In some cases, the national anti-doping agency's scope of action has been broadened, as is the case with Sport Integrity Australia (6). In other cases, such as in Canada, parallel structures have emerged (2). Within international federations, following in the footsteps of athletics, integrity units are being developed that take a holistic approach to these problems. The question then arises: where is the frontier between integrity in sport and anti-doping, if it exists? One may argue that anti-doping is obviously part of integrity, so anti-doping sciences necessarily fall under the “integrity” umbrella. While the latter makes sense, dealing with issues of inclusivity in athletes' participation in sporting events or trying to develop a new detection method for a forbidden substance ultimately requires very different expertise from various scientific angles. After launching the Anti-doping section in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living in 2020, we underlined that education, deterrence, detection, enforcement, and the rule of law represent five firm pillars to delineate a broad field of exploration of doping and anti-doping initiatives with reference to the ever-evolving regulatory context of anti-doping (7). The focus was set on this “niche” section, while contributions to the journal and exchanges with the editors among the board made us realize that the notion of integrity in sports allowed us to redefine anti-doping research with input from numerous other disciplines. This section has thus now evolved to be renamed “Anti-doping Sciences & Integrity in Sport” to broaden its scope and offer more researchers the chance to share their views and scientific research. This evolution also follows the level of professionalization occurring in all sports, including not only athletes as professionals but also all their entourage, teams, or sponsors. Interestingly, the beam of light set on an individual cheater as a black sheep needs to be expanded to encompass all actors associated with any illegally enhanced athletic performance production. The World Anti-Doping Code, the main regulatory and harmonized document for anti-doping endorsed worldwide, has been revised in 2021 to better protect whistleblowers. These may indeed refer to “socially accepted” informants and reflect the need to sanction individuals trying to compromise the whistleblowers' integrity. Furthermore, the Code now also defines substances of abuse, recognizing that taking such substances [i.e., cocaine, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), heroin, or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)] may be indicative of a wider substance misuse or addiction problem with no related performance enhancement aim. The athlete is the center of attention, with the emphasis shifting away from the sole production of performance (and alleged illegal enhancement by doping) and back to their behavior, which is requested to be exemplary for the sake of the spirit of sport. This reflects the importance of athletic events as a social vector of (positive, but not exclusively so) emotions with underlying (and strong) moral principles. Historically, there have been numerous professional athletes at the heart of financial shenanigans. Welsh track cyclist Jimmy Michael was undoubtedly the first athlete punished for a doping-related issue. He was considered one of the most successful and spectacular cyclists on the track in the late 1890s and...