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Coincidentally, it was after the death of a cyclist during the Olympic Games in
Rome in 1960 that the IOC began giving serious consideration to this practice.
The IOC Medical Commission was created in 1967 during the 66 th IOC Session
in Teheran, and Prince Alexandre de Merode, IOC member in Belgium, was
appointed its chairman.
The work of this Commission is based on three fundamental principles:
• protection of the health of the athletes
• respect of medical ethics and sports ethics
• equality of opportunity at the moment of competition
Why resort to doping?
Doping as a phenomenon has its root in the fact that man has never
been able to accept his physical or mental limits. Writers using cocaine,
student's amphetamines, managers stimulants, and soldiers the most sophisticated
doping agents (e.g. the bromantan case in Atlanta), or even use of the Viagra
tablet, all show the same desire by man to improve his performance and
even improve his well-being. In the sportsman, this phenomenon meets the
demands of a competitive society, which defines an obsessive need to overreach
oneself.
The motivating factors may be very diverse, but essentially, sportspeople do it
from a need to prove themselves, to go beyond themselves, to show that they are
better than others, to win be it at local or international level.
Doping has become a real problem in modern sport, leading to the need to ask
a number of questions and consider its causes.
There are of course numerous causes, but two central ones should be
highlighted:
• the drive to perform
• sport as entertainment
The drive to perform.
Spectators have become increasingly demanding, and in order to maintain
a certain attraction for the sports event, the standard must always be improved,
especially that of performances. A meeting where no world records are broken
is considered to be a bad meeting!
Appreciation of sport for its own sake has been replaced by the lure of
record-breaking performances.
The meaning of the motto "faster, higher, stronger" has thus been diverted from
its original concept by the organisers of sports events who always need more
money, and therefore more spectators and performances.
This leads us to the second cause, which is:
• Sport as entertainment
How sports events are staged has become more and more important (with
lavish opening ceremonies, etc.). The aim of staging sport in such a way is to make
it more attractive, especially to the media, which used to provide a service by
broadcasting events, but which is now increasingly becoming a partner in the
organisation of these sports events.
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