Doping: A Sporting History

Doping has been a perennial problem in sport for many years, with the current anti-doping system dating back to the founding of the modern Olympic Games. The late twentieth century saw the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency, but has the intensity of these global measures led to unintended harms? Doping: A Sporting History proposes a new approach for the inclusion and protection of athletes themselves.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 16 May 2022
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Why is doping a perennial problem for sport? Is this solely a ​contemporary phenomenon? And should doping always be regarded as cheating, or do today’s anti-doping measures go too far?Drawing on case studies from the early twentieth century to the present day, Doping: A Sporting History explores why the current anti-doping system looks as it does, charting its origins to the founding of the modern Olympic Games. From inter-war notions of sporting purity to the post-war stimulant crisis, what seemed an easily resolvable problem soon became an impossible challenge as the pharmacology improved, the policy system stuttered, and Cold War politics allowed doping to flourish. The late twentieth century saw the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency, but has the intensity of these global measures led to unintended harms?From the cyclist Tommy Simpson who died in 1967 on Mont Ventoux with amphetamines in his jersey to ​Team Russia’s expulsion from the 2018 Winter Olympics, Doping: A Sporting History is a gripping, provocative account that ultimately proposes a new approach: one for the inclusion and protection of athletes.

Weight: 444g
Dimension: 146 x 223 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781789145274