Doping would make sport more about talent and less about genetics

The argument

Proponents of this argument begin from a blunt observation about elite competition: professional sport is, at bottom, a genetic lottery. Who wins and who loses is only marginally influenced by talent in the sense that matters — the skills, judgment, discipline, and craft an athlete develops. Far more decisive, on this view, are the biological endowments an athlete happens to be born with: the raw physical capacities that no amount of training can fully overcome. Two competitors can work equally hard and prepare equally intelligently, and yet the outcome is largely settled in advance by an accident of birth that neither of them chose or earned. Permitting doping, advocates argue, would change this. If performance-enhancing substances were allowed, then anyone could theoretically reach the same level of biological performance. Enhancement would function as an equalizer: the athlete shortchanged by the genetic draw could raise their physiology toward the ceiling that others reached by luck alone. Once competitors converge on a comparable biological baseline, the inherited advantages that currently dominate results would lose their decisive weight. The genetic playing field would be levelled. What would then separate athletes, proponents hold, is precisely what sport claims to celebrate: talent. With biology equalized, outcomes would turn on skill, dedication, strategy, and the other qualities athletes actually cultivate rather than inherit. Sport would become more talent-focused and less genetics-focused — a truer test of the person than of their chromosomes. On this reasoning, doping is not a corruption of fair competition but a correction to an unfairness already built into it. Because permitting enhancement would shift the basis of victory from unchosen genetic endowment to developed ability, advocates conclude that doping should be allowed.

Context

A great deal of an athlete’s success is determined by their genetic potential. A person’s height dictates their basketball talents, those with the ACE gene are better long-distance runners, and genetic mutations that increase competitors red blood cell counts are afforded an advantage in aerobic disciplines.

Premises

Counter-arguments

This is a short-sighted view. If anything, allowing performance-enhancing drugs into professional sport would make it more focused on genetics. Imagine what happens when the long-distance runner with the ACE gene and an abnormally high red blood cell count takes strychnine. The gap between “natural” athletes that did not take performance-enhancing drugs and those that did would widen to such an extent that the upper echelons of sports would only be available to the competitors that had both a genetic and chemically-induced advantage.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Those with genetic advantages would dope as well. [Rejecting P3] Therefore, sport would not become more about natural talent. Genetic advantage would remain a major conduit for success.