When Rituals Fail: Confessions of Doping in Elite Sports

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, Protestant reformers declared: Sport builds character. They described sport as ethically valuable and as an experiential tool to teach values and cooperation. However, sports have long raised ethical challenges when it comes to fairness in competition. This article examines controversies over performance enhancing drugs and pays attention to the rituals of confession at play for those caught doping. Nineteenth-century revivalist Charles Finney formalized a ritual practice that became known as the “anxious bench”. Finney would demand that a sinner sit on the bench, separated from others because of their sinfulness, and confess their sinful ways in order to re-devote themselves to God and goodness. Turning to steroid use in Major League Baseball and Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal, I consider how rituals of confession based on the anxious bench failed to redeem these athletes because the athletes themselves resisted the premise. Rituals of confession preserve an underlying ideology that sport is morally valuable. When these rituals fail, they reveal less noble structural motivations that lead to doping in the first place like monetary reward, intense pressure to perform, and the entertainment demands of elite sport.