23rd British Philosophy of Sport Association (BPSA) Conference

The “spirit of sport” has long been a contested concept in anti-doping policy. Initially developed to explain why doping is incompatible with an ethically defensible understanding of sport, the concept was subsequently shaped by marketing discourse before being incorporated into the first WADA Code in 2003. Since then, scholars have challenged both its status and usefulness. Philosophers and humanist scholars argue that its vagueness renders it unworkable as a regulatory criterion, while social scientists highlight its historical entanglement with classist and gendered ideals rooted in Victorian amateurism. As a result, the concept is often regarded as normatively problematic and potentially anachronistic.

Despite these criticisms, the spirit of sport retains – and in the 2027 WADA Code even amplifies – its central role within global anti-doping efforts. In this talk, I undertake a piece of conceptual engineering to examine how the spirit of sport relates to leading philosophical accounts of the nature and value of sport. I then consider the challenges that arise when a concept developed within particular social and historical conditions is applied as a universal normative standard across diverse global sporting practices. I conclude by offering a tentative redefinition of the spirit of sport that responds to these conceptual and practical challenges and that may better serve the needs of contemporary anti-doping policy.

Almost 20 years ago, I wrote about the impact of technology on the sport of running, primarily in terms of fairness (Sailors 2009). Technology has continued to play an increasing role, altering individual events to an extent that some argue constitutes a change in kind rather than degree. More than merely threatening fairness, technological intervention may risk the integrity or authenticity of the sporting events to which it is applied and the athletes whose events are implicated.

I explore whether recent technological innovations should be seen as elements of the natural evolution of sporting achievement or as a paradigm shift such that intertemporal comparison cannot reasonably be made. To provide a framework for the discussion, I revisit Edward Tenner’s notion of revenge effects: “ironic, unintended consequences of mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical ingenuity” (Tenner 1997, 6). Revenge effects occur because we fail to foresee the results of human interaction with technology in actual practice. Devices and seemingly clever interventions designed to enhance knowledge and performance may produce overwhelming or overcomplicated data and unexpected auxiliary effects that question the knowledge we thought we had and have negative effects on performance.

After presenting examples of several categories of revenge effects in sport, I offer an outline of how we might evaluate new technologies. I conclude by sketching policy changes we ought consider to protect the authenticity of athletes and preserve the spirit of sport.