By Ask Vest Christiansen, Aarhus University and John Gleaves, California State University, Fullerton.
On 15-16 August, the INHDR held its fifth international conference in Aarhus, Denmark. The conference was well attended, but more importantly the papers that were delivered had a noticeably high quality. I couldn't help comparing with other conferences I have attended with hundreds or perhaps thousands of delegates placed at fabulous venues but where I've only heard about a handful of interesting papers. So, as they say; "It's not the size of the ship, it's the motion of the ocean!" And there were many papers at the INHDR conference that made waves on the doping issue. Quite a few took the challenge and reflected upon the conference theme "What do we (really) know about doping?" in their presentations. Not only as regards to the reliability of official statistics and the information that flows from organisations, NADOs and other stakeholders in sport, but also the more demanding task of confronting one's own previous research and the potential drawbacks and pitfalls it has had. Not only is such a task demanding it is also very fruitful since it allows for real progress in the studies and analyses we disseminate.
Knowing that it won't do justice to all the great presentations that were given, let us just point to a few of the issues that were addressed in Aarhus by our keynotes: Professor John Hoberman from Texas University drew attention to the fact that what has often been referred to as anti-doping education has rarely been anything but artistic posters, finger pointing or indifferent online games. Instead he suggested that we pay more attention to the life lessons transmitted in autobiographies like those of Tyler Hamilton and David Millar in order to understand the ethical dilemmas athletes face. In a similar vein, Professor Jay Coakley of University of Colorado pointed out the hypocrisy often evident when athletes, based on essentialist and moralistic ideas about the purity, goodness and character-building traits of sport, are blamed for a behaviour focused on enhancement that is often just mirroring what is seen in society at large. In a blunt presentation, Dr Werner Pitsch of Saarland University analysed what ambitions on eradicating doping athletes, sport federations, spectators and ADOs respectively are really having. Pitsch argued that it is unlikely that any of these stakeholders have a genuine interest in eradicating doping from sport. An insider to the field of professional cycling, performance expert and former Festina trainer, Antoine Vayer, drew attention to new ways of assessing performances on the bike that can be regarded as humanly possible without the assistance of drugs or blood transfusions. Vayer's basic idea is the instalment of 'radars', which calculate estimated power output generated by riders on decisive climbs. These can provide additional information on whether the performance of the best overall riders in a grand tour are doping or not. Vayer has positioned his threshold for when a standardised rider's performance is suspicious at 410 watts. For those further interested in the subject Vayer generously made access to his magazine "Not Normal" for the conference delegates. In her presentation on Potentials and pitfalls of self-reports in doping research, professor Andrea Petroczi of Kingston University addressed how doping use from the athlete's perspective is often regarded as a functional rather than a moral act, and how this insight is fundamental when creating anti-doping education programs. Petroczi discussed the possible implications of applying tools such as the Implicit Association Test as a means to get a better grip of athletes' subconsciously held thoughts and feelings toward doping. What was a sub-theme in Petroczi's paper became explicit in Professor Verner Møller's presentation on the extent to which athletes' statements in qualitative interviews on doping can be relied upon. Møller confronted his own research on the infamous Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen who was expelled from the 2007 Tour de France. Even though Møller felt he had established a trusting relationship with Rasmussen including the establishment of clear 'rules' for their interaction, and had interviewed him for more than 30 hours he was still mislead, if not lied to, on specific and very sensitive issues. This made Møller question the use of qualitative interviews as a reliable tool in research on controversial issues.
Many other presentations stood out at the conference. There were great papers on the 'invention' of the 'Spirit of Sport' criterion in WADA's code; on the neglecting attitude to doping among football trainers in the FA; on the attitude to drugs in mixed martial arts, on the public's attitude to doping; on the new networks of drug supply in Belgian cycling, on the pitfalls in studying doping and the cold war and much more.
Two personal accounts of the conference, written by two graduate INHDR-members can be read elsewhere in this newsletter.
All in all, we considered the 5th INHDR conference a success and will continue to work on how we can utilize each other's knowledge and resources in the future. In this respect your inputs, ideas and suggestions are not only welcome but crucial for a continuing development of the network.
In the upcoming months we will be looking forward to receiving your papers for the special issue of Performance Enhancement and Health. You should go to http://ees.elsevier.com/peh/default.asp log in as author and then choose "INHDR 2013" in the drop down menu (Choose Article Type) when submitting your paper. Deadline for submission is 1 November 2013.
Finally, can we please ask members of the network to go to their profile page at www.doping.au.dk to check if everything is as you want it to be, and send eventual corrections/updates in text and information to the network secretary, Carsten Kraushaar Martensen: carsten.kraushaar.martensen@studsport.au.dk . He will then make sure that your profile page is up-to-date.