I am working on a research project at the moment, wanting to combine my cycling interests, fan, rider, writer, with my legal and philosophical interests. I sent the folllowing to some friends last night and thought people who come here might have ideas,,,,,, please let me know what you think ...


This purpose of this proposal is to gain support for a research project that seeks to lay the foundations for the formulation of an ethical and a 'sensible' approach to the problem of doping in the sport of professional cycling.

Without a detailed research project which examines the manner in which the doping question is problematised it is argued that no such sensible and ethical approach to the problem may be formulated.

"The initial task of the project will be to examine the the logic and rhetoric of the calls for a 'clean' sport and also that which sustains doping practices.

This logic and rhetoric will then be assessed in relation to (or measured against):

- the actual material processes and tendencies that are both internal to cycling itself, and

-those broader material processes involved in the process of globalisation and the changing forms of economic production occurring as society moves more and more away from an industrial to an informational economic base.

Related questions that the research will seek to answer include:

- why it is cycling that is the focal point of the criminal law's interest and not other sports where evidence suggest that doping is also prevalent?

- why is it when sport, as with other aspects of society, become more technologically aided or integrated, that society increasingly calls for sport to become more and more pure, natural and clean?

- why is it that in the policing of the doping problem that traditional legal rights and guarantees, such as the presumption of innocence , appear to become less applicable or relevant."


....the notion of tests as health checks is aso relevant ....


I have started gathering relevant 'academic' writings on cycling and doping here:

http://auskadi.omweb.org/modules/wakka/CyclingBibliography