This chapter in the book offers a broad overview of the current problems in sports; among others, racism stands out in its various structures. First, the identification of stakeholders in the organization of sports activities is given to determine the most optimal management decisions that take into account the identified interests. The specifics emerge as we look at the transformation of sports structures through the lens of doping cases, anti-racism protests in 2020, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Against the backdrop of crises in the battle against the spread of coronavirus, various scandals based on discrimination, marks in the context of globalization, and constant control by the media are in a rather tricky situation. Since quite important values are postulated at a deep philosophical level, which is often violated in every possible way at the state and lower levels, up to the athletes themselves.
Doping causes great harm to the health of athletes, but the main problem is considered ethical: doping kills the idea of fair competition that underlies sports and the Olympic movement. However, this issue is superimposed in a modern context that includes various points of discrimination, including racism. The main message of this article is to postulate the main problems most relevant in sports through the prism of current challenges shaped by the pandemic and long-standing questions. The new context becomes a condition for the task of management decisions at various levels of governance, where the activities of multiple organizations in this area are discussed.
In the context of racism, the athletes’ interest is apparent and implies an inclusive attitude and the promotion of diversity while maintaining sports fairness. In matters of doping, possible ways of developing the situation include two directions: strengthening control and combating the consequences. The interest of athletes in this situation lies in assisting the relevant organizations in experiments and experiments, as well as in opportunities and proposals for optimizing management processes. When these issues are combined, structural or institutional racism is revealed when sports injustice is maintained at higher levels of management. In globalization, this type of violation stands out as the most dangerous and requires more diligent work from organizations such as the UNI World Athletes/World Players Association and others, which are considered the practical point of view in this article.
The fight against racism and doping has a different direction of managerial decisions and actions, but the vector of striving for violated values is the same. This fact means that the protection of the interests of athletes is similar in many respects in the sports context of the two given problems; the differences lie in how these goals are achieved. The article assesses the activities of such companies, emphasizing the importance of the practical implementation of particular cases. An invariable feature of such issues is a feature of complexity, which is determined by global crises affecting the economic and political aspects of activity against the background of direct sports problems, identifying the potential development of the relevant institutions and federations.
The problem of racism in doping and drugs in sports needs to be considered from different angles. The postulation of fairness and the sporting interest in righteousness in the previous article is replaced by questions of winning in the work of Hardwick et al. The philosophical subtext of sporting achievements involves using all available forces and means to win places on the podium. However, legal factors and laws limit the funds available to athletes. However, violations still occur today, leading to disproportionate sporting achievements.
The desire to win is described by perfectionism as the desire for absolutely perfect results, regardless of the effort involved. Athletes and higher authorities sometimes view a violation of laws and regulations as an opportunity to achieve victory in a competition, which can promise not only actual recognition in the sporting sense but also various media opportunities, including financial injections and sponsorship. The struggle for such interest may include the use of doping and resort to racism, often controlled at higher levels of sports organizations. In this regard, sports perfectionism needs a vital clarification, which should be devoid of personal interests.
This article proposes a study that tracked the relationship between doping and perfectionism. Discrimination, in this case, manifested itself as one of the options for a strong relationship between a positive attitude towards doping and a sense of superiority. Another consequence of this connection is the desire to constantly improve their results, which, on the one hand, does not contradict the interests of the primary sport, but on the other hand, uses an illegal way. As a result, it turns out that a high level of perfectionism correlates with a positive attitude towards doping, which, however, does not guarantee the involvement of participating athletes in its use. However, the solution does not lie solely in the plane of perfectionism, which is not inherently destructive of sports principles and is even necessary in some cases.
Doping remains a crucial tool to achieve the goal due to its high efficiency, which sometimes eliminates the risks of its use for athletes. Against the backdrop of the study, this article proposes not to abandon perfectionism but considers it necessary to reorient values, due to which deviations towards doping, discrimination, and, as a result, racism are possible. The development of the survey reveals one of the likely facets or premises of the problem, which requires additional research for more specific results. The scientific community on this issue is still looking for the right concepts to describe the phenomenon of doping and discrimination in the sport before being able to provide potential solutions in an applied sense to specific organizations.
The use of philosophical and political concepts is necessary for theoretical descriptions and understanding of non-obvious signs of sports problems. As in the first two cases, scientists resorted to an intelligent explanation of sports, so Macedo turned to the concept of imperialism in this article. Post-imperialist control is widely studied and described through various prisms: for example, economic and historical. Bringing WADA, as a critical doping control organization, to the ideology of the imperialist system begins to show many similarities, which ultimately leads to the possibility of applying this method’s predictive and descriptive function. In particular, the author’s work focuses on the shortcomings of imperialism and the possible consequences of how it can negatively affect athletes and other stakeholders. That being said, the article offers a potential solution and resorts to this comparison in the first place for this reason.
Michel Foucault’s power assessment model, which focuses on the notion of legal power, is used as a tool of analysis. Athletes participating in a system that implies equal rights and obligations for all must comply with specific rules. In turn, control over these rules is carried out under the supervision of the International Olympic Committee, which in turn is the last resort. The organizations representing the interests of athletes are not endowed with comparable power to the institutions responsible for the designated set of rules. At least at this level, a significant inversion occurs in any conflict situation, especially if there is a hidden interest. Rarely are there cases where structural racism occurs due to such decisions? As a result, the consideration of WADA from the point of view of imperialism has a more tangible connotation in terms of the system’s functioning in practice.
Finally, the solution in this article is offered through Maria Lugones’ concept of a playful journey through the world. Using this methodology, it is possible to plan the first steps in the reorganization of the anti-doping movement on the part of athletes, which can help achieve actual results at the organizational level in international and government institutions. The essence lies in the psychological acceptance of diversity and renewal, contrary to the foundations of imperialism, as the highest degree of capitalism with the power of monopolies and the division of the world without the consent of weaker players. In this consideration, military force is replaced by legal staff, which, according to Michel Foucault’s theory, can be a similar opportunity to build a given stage of capitalism. As a result, the foreign policy expansion of the influence of this organization can go far beyond the limits of its operational activities and areas of responsibility when even levers of pressure on state power that are far from sports are used, or vice versa. Restoring a fair attitude and preventing various negative scenarios requires complex actions both on the part of athletes, according to the concept of Lugones, and on the part of the authorities as a response to the reaction of athletes.
This article gives a more humanistic assessment of athletes’ rights through the prism of discriminatory activities and doping. It raises issues of gender and genes and provides various clinical studies and a list of properties and characteristics by which the sex of an athlete is determined. However, given the humanistic policy of inclusiveness and diversity, which has become postulated, including at the level of sports competitions, these experiments, tests, and doubts, especially those brought to the public’s attention, are often contradictory. The article initially cited the example of Santhi Soundararajan and the athlete’s attempted suicide after the case was made public. The report then delves into the scientific details of sex determination procedures, focusing on political issues and responsible organizations.
Considerable attention is paid to the T/E test and testosterone, and their nature concerning male and female gender is explained. Then the article offers to get acquainted with more complex cases, namely the transgender phenomenon and relevant policies on this topic. Developing the scientific path of this topic, a separate chapter is deduced to dispel various myths often found in the media. As a result, the athletes and the public get the impression of specific role models and expected behavior, which is regulated to a greater extent by public opinion and several media outlets than by organizations with legal force. This fact creates the ground for many conflicting and non-obvious situations from a moral point of view when athletes’ personal and professional lives collide, to which discriminatory overtones are inevitably added.
At the same time, the biological features of tests, experiments, and the basis for judicial and managerial decisions do not always fully correspond to each other, which is why a conflict arises, and the outcome is often taken in favor of organizations such as CAS, WADA, and several others. Whatever the outcome, even the process itself is sometimes at odds with many attitudes, values, and human rights, as this case of Kristen Worley proves. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of confidentiality, and the security of such procedures, and the responsibility for these aspects lies with the representatives of the commissions and higher institutions and not with the athletes, who are already deprived of many personal rights in practice.
Using the example of various cases and the relevant decisions of bodies with legal power, this article gives an almost complete picture of the current situation around gender in sports. This material can be used as a list of possible fields for potential discrimination of athletes for their further reorganization. Moreover, Chapter 4.11 argues that there is an inevitable connection between the existence of gender discrimination and such cases of racism. At the same time, the power of some sports organizations sometimes even goes beyond human rights, which is confirmed even by higher institutions that are not directly related to sports. As a result, a sense of presumption of guilt is created in any suspicious case, especially concerning women and sexual minorities. The issue of discrimination is closely linked to the point of doping by athletes, which significantly amplifies the implications for the fundamental values of sport.
References
Hardwick, B., Madigan, D. J., Hill, A. P., Kumar, S., & Chan, D. K. (2022). Perfectionism and attitudes towards doping in athletes: The mediating role of achievement goal orientations. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 20(3), 743-756.
Lenskyj, H. J. (2018). Doping, Genes, and Gender. In Gender, Athletes’ Rights, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Macedo, E. (2018). WADA and imperialism? A philosophical look into anti-doping and athletes as coloniser and colonised. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 10(3), 415-427.
Thibault, L. (2021). Sport Governance, Democracy and Globalization. In The Palgrave Handbook of Globalization and Sport (pp. 627-647). Palgrave Macmillan.