Australian athlete support personnel lived experience of anti-doping

Jason Mazanov, Dennis Hemphill, James Connor, Frances Quirk and Susan H. Backhouse

Sport Management Review, 2015, vol. 18, issue 2, 218-230

Abstract: •Support personnel lived experience of anti-doping diverges from policy.•Support personnel need greater assistance from anti-doping organisations.•Support personnel report normalisation of doping early in athletic careers.Athlete support personnel (ASP) implement drug control policies for sport, such as anti-doping. Interviews with 39 ASP reveal how differences between policy and practice play out in their “lived experience” of anti-doping. While most ASP support the ideology underlying anti-doping at a “common sense” level (using popular drug and sporting discourses such as “drugs are bad” and sporting virtue), they are critical of anti-doping practice. Combined with no direct experience with doping, ASP saw doping as a rare event unlikely to emerge in practice. Most ASP took a laissez-faire approach to anti-doping, relying on managers to know what to do in the unlikely event of a doping incident. Despite broadly supporting the ideas of anti-doping, ASP raised concerns around implementation with regards to Athlete Whereabouts and recreational drug use. In response to hypothetical doping events, a number of ASP would seek to persuade the athlete to discontinue doping rather than meet mandatory reporting obligations. Part of this extended from conflicts between professional and anti-doping obligations (e.g. mandatory reporting and patient confidentiality). ASP demonstrate anti-doping policies are in tension with a practice that systematically normalises substance based performance enhancement early in sporting careers. Anti-doping agencies need to do more to engage with ASP as the “front line” of drug management in sport, including resolving contradictions across policies and in practice.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2014.05.007

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