Testing for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport by Kathryn E. Henne (review)

The evolution of scientific technologies has changed the way that athletes engage and participate in sport. It is not enough simply to practice and train hard; rather, every training session is monitored and evaluated to optimize performance. Athletes’ bodies have become objects that are tested, prodded, and measured daily to ensure that the concept of “no stone left unturned” is applied. As such, athletes, coaches, and their support team (including biomechanists, physiologists, nutritionists, sport psychologists, strength and conditioning trainers, athletic/physical therapists, and chemists) will search for anything that will provide an athlete with an advantage over competitors. Not surprisingly, this search for the “holy grail” of athletic performance has led some athletes to use unauthorized performance-enhancing substances. While the use of substances to enhance one’s performance is not new (athletes in ancient Greece were known to ingest wine and hallucinogens to boost their performances), chemists have become central in the development of specialized drugs for modern athletes to win. These substances have the ability to give an unnatural advantage to an athlete, so, in 1966, the quest to hunt down cheaters began. The argument was made that those who used performance-enhancing substances had an unfair advantage over their competitors. Thus, in an attempt to level the playing field, international sport-governing bodies have implemented biomedicalized forms of surveillance.

In Testing for Athlete Citizenship, Henne examines the hypocrisies associated with these forms of surveillance and the desire to force a form of fair play in sport. Using the concept of athlete citizenship, she argues that technologies and forms of social control interconnect to translate ideologies about the ability and difference. Doping control serves as a moral crusade: the search for impurities. Justified by paternalistic concerns of the health and well-being of athletes, the author argues that “anti-doping regulation orients around punishment as a form of condemning polluted bodies and distinguishing them from so-called pure ones” (54). The World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) reinforces that doping is symptomatic of the moral decay of sport and, thus, serves as justification for the continued surveillance of athletes who would wrongly steal medals away from the innocent.

Interestingly, Henne expands beyond an examination of doping control and looks more broadly at other forms of biomedicalized surveillance, specifically sex testing. Undoubtedly, doping control and femininity control are perfect examples of the attempt by sport-governing bodies to reinforce control over the athletic body. Through sex testing, binary concepts of gender are supported and reinforced. A person is either male or female, and, as such, this can be proven scientifically. A woman is capable of performing certain physical abilities; however, if she is too strong, too fast, or too good, then she challenges traditional concepts of acceptable femininity. Thus, female athletes must prove that they are indeed females through a series of tests, predominantly administered by men.

Henne indicates that forms of biomedicalized surveillance suggest three interrelated myths about the body: “that athletes can attain a form of bodily purity, that regulation can protect a kind of naturalness, and that science can provide evidence that proves these myths are truths” (145). Athletes face pressure to prove their purity and adhere to moral codes of innocence. Arguably those who are clean and natural have no need to worry, but those who are not will face public shaming. Furthermore, the prevalence of questioning other athletes’ purity weighs heavily on many. Are they clean? Are they pure? Is this fair? These questions remain part of the discourse, and the continual surveillance does nothing to alleviate them.