Does one play with the athletes’ health in the name of ethics?

• The fight against doping officially relies on two main justification patterns – i.e. health and ethical considerations.
• Moral, political and in particular financial concerns actually seem to drive the anti-doping policy.
• The emphasis on supply-side anti-doping increasingly deters ‘experts’ – i.e. physicians – from supplying doping products.
• As a consequence, athletes increasingly consider ‘non-experts’ – i.e. market-oriented dealers – as possible suppliers.
• The recent developments of anti-doping policy may have unintended and harmful effects on the athletes’ health.

The anti-doping policy is based on three institutional pillars of varying importance and officially relies on two major motives: the defense of sports ethics and the protection of athletes’ health. However, behind these official grounds, other considerations – i.e. moral, political and financial concerns – appear to shape anti-doping policy. Furthermore, the current trend of anti-doping efforts is to develop activities that tackle the supply-side of the doping market. In this article, we consider the possible impact of the emphasis on supply-side anti-doping on sport. The project focuses on Belgian and French elite cycling and relies on a multi-method instrumentation set, including the realisation of 77 semi-structured interviews among policy-makers, cyclists and their medical and technical staff as well as the administration of an online survey among competitive cyclists.