‘The Good, Pure Old Days’: Cyclist's Switching Appraisals of Doping before and after Retirement as Claims Making in the Construction of Doping as a Social Problem

Abstract

According to our interpretation of the model of technological continuity and change proposed by the media scholar Brian Winston, prominent former athletes influential with the public opinion could be seen as embodying ‘the law of suppression of the radical potential’ of innovation with performance-enhancement techniques and substances (PETS), as opposed to the entrepreneurial role in this field they adopted when they were still active, embodying the ‘supervening social necessity’ which push forward these innovation processes. This paper documents this dialectic by comparing the lenient and understanding attitudes and stances on PETS of prominent cyclists when still active with their radical rejection of doping and dopers once retired. Their claims, and those of the dominant paradigm in scholarly accounts of the history of PETS, about an alleged qualitative and quantitative ‘worsening’ of ‘the doping problem’ in the last 40–50 years, are thoroughly examined and criticised. It is concluded that a number of prominent retired athletes have become claims-makers successfully involved in the construction of ‘the social problem of doping’ through their nostalgic appraisals of the evolution of PETS usage, despite these appraisals being mostly baseless on rational grounds.