Drugs are bad, kids

It seems that every week sees a new scandal in the world of sport. Last week saw the publication of a report which uncovered widespread doping throughout Australian sport. The same week Europol announced that they had uncovered a huge match fixing ring in football covering an estimated 680 matches throughout the world. This came hot on the heels of the Lance Armstrong scandal, so can we believe anything we see in the sporting world anymore?

The last few months have been particularly bad for the sporting integrity. Scandal after scandal has raised questions over the integrity of sport, its athletes and governing bodies. The narrative, as a result, is unsurprisingly negative, sport is rotten and morally bankrupt.

No doubt these scandals are a blow to our trust in sport. However, in many ways the unravelling of these scandals should be viewed positively, as it shows that the authorities are attempting to get on top of the problem, and are having some success.

A case in point being cycling, which was riddled with drugs for years with the governing bodies either unaware of the problem or unwilling to act. It took the Festina Affair in 1998 to at least bring the issue to attention, and it was another eight or nine years before the cycling authorities really started to get tough on the problem, when the weight of evidence became too great to ignore.

These disclosures have resulted in a culture shift in cycling and in drug testing. The most notable development was that of the biological passport to track long term changes in physiology. Moreover it is no longer expected that young cyclists enter the doping side of the sport. Although we can never say that cycling is completely clean, it is clear that significant progress has been made, and that could not have occurred without the scandal.

The Armstrong scandal has resulted in a cascade effect of soul searching in many sports, notably tennis where there has been much discussion over lax testing procedures, and prominent players such as Roger Federer have called for the introduction of biological passports. It appears that the scandal has woken up many previously complacent sports from their slumber, and that can only be a good thing

The worst mistake to make is for authorities to sit idly by and assume that their sport is clean, because there have been no positive tests or uncovered scandals. Many of the greatest scandals such as Lance Armstrong or Marion Jones were uncovered without so much as a positive test, but were fuelled by a healthy dose of scepticism towards there unbelievable performances.

What we need is a new era of hyper-vigilant sports administration, where instead of sitting back and waiting for the scandal to come to them, officials proactively investigate anything that looks out of the ordinary in terms of results and performances. This may create a culture of suspicion, which may be unfair to certain athletes, but its certainly better than the alternative.

Even more importantly, there needs to be serious deterrents to dissuade people from cheating. Mandatory lifetime bans instead of the paltry two years (often less) is a must, and I would argue that the criminalisation of doping, as has been done in France, should be a precedent carried forward. This won’t stop cheating, the potential rewards will mean it will always be with us, but it would be a start.

Most importantly though, the focus should be on preventing young athletes from falling into this world. One common denominator of most sporting scandals, is that most athletes become immersed in a culture of cheating at a early stage of their careers, often coerced by older competitors. All the regulation and testing in the world will pale into insignificance if authorities can break the chain of corruption before it infects the next generation.