"Breaking the financial matrix of professional sport: Towards developing an account of shared moral responsibility for doping"

Silvia Camporesi (Center for the Humanities and Health (King's College of London))

The World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) Code for anti-doping places the burden of strict liability for doping on the athlete only. But we all know that professional athletes in elite sport find themselves in a financial matrix that incentivises doping. Sponsors benefit from the successes and the competitive advantage of their sponsored athletes and drive the this financial matrix, but coaches, teammates, and the media are also relevant stakeholders that, together,  incentivize doping in professional sport.

In response to the recent doping scandals, Savulescu has proposed in several occasions to legalise doping, or to put doping ‘under medical control’. In this paper I argue that lifting the ban on doping and putting doping ‘under a medical context’ would not lead to professional sport clean of doping, but that a two-tiered system of doping (under a medical context and of secretive doping) would ensue. I then use Strawson’s relational concept of agency and reactive attitudes to ascribe responsibility for doping to sponsors.