Yesterday Lance Armstrong, the 7 time winner of the Tour de France, released a post on his website which basically amounted to him saying enough is enough with regard of the USADA's attack on his character. This is an opinion I've head for a while, but never articulated it here so I will now. It shouldn't be the business of the federal government to regulate doping in sports, and the sports themselves should not ban the use of these substances. In every argument against performance enhancing drugs, the two pillars of the argument which hold up the entire argument are as follow: these substances are detrimental to the athletes health and they give an unfair advantage. Those two arguments are oblivious to how fairness operates in our society, and for that matter are missing the point in regards to creating a playing field for players which is as fair as possible.
It's no secret that performance enhancing drugs are detrimental to the users health, but so is all athletic competition to begin with. This glass house that is caring for the athletes health is quickly shattered when you take into account violence is a quantifiable interest which drives spectators to the sport to begin with. As long as any sport has an audience, Pollice verso will exist to obstruct this idea that you the spectator actually care more for the athletes well being than your own entertainment. The other pillar, the one of 'unfair' advantage misses the point to an extent even greater than that of the previous. Where is the cutoff for what we deem as spectators to be unfair? In Hockey, Baseball and Soccer are we going to change the cutoff date so that some kids who are older at time of the cutoff aren't given an 'advantage' over other kids? Are we going to make all sporting equipment both in practice as during play standard so that some players aren't given an advantage at any period in their development? Are diets now to be regulated?
This idea that we can create equality by starting at the top only exasperates the greater injustices that I mentioned before. Far more children are given unfair advantages early on in their development than these athletes competing at the top, despite this we've created agencies like the USADA. No federal agency is large enough to tackle true unfairness in sports, so creating one such as the USADA is a superfluous exercise. It is an exercise that would seem to exists to inflate the egos of the spectators, the fans who have nothing to bring to the sport but everything to do to constrain the athletes freedom. True achievable justice lies in not restricting the athletes but giving them as many possibilities at all levels of class or income possible to achieve their desired goals within the rules laid out on the field of play, not restricting what they do off it. If we are to set out in achieving the improbable task that is creating an equal playing field, it is at the bottom not the top where we should start.
The principles that articulate the legitimate rules of sports should be those to which YOU would agree if YOU did not know which role you were going to play. The inequalities that exist and will persist should be arranged so that they benefit the least advantaged members in the sport. The pervasive nature of top athletes all being born in the same month, likely due to cutoff time for when those sports are played is a quantifiable injustice that objectively gives a greater 'disadvantage' than that of performance enhancing drugs because it gives more athletes an advantage. Despite this, we've spent millions of tax payers dollars to go after athletes at the top level of play, when that money could have been better spent in improving athletic programs fairness at the bottom. We've created a sporting environment where trading freedom for utility is a norm, and to me that's disgusting. The only purpose it seems to serve is to inflate the egos of those who spectate.
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