Sport vs Spectacle

A thousand fuzzy thoughts on doped-up running entertainment

I write this, somewhat jetlagged, from my parents’ dining table as I decamp to London for August. If you’re in London this month, let’s hang out! I have a series of panel events at Runlimited on August 12-14, so you’ll know exactly where I’ll be then. Take a read of what we’ll be talking about.

Conversations in London this August

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the positive drug test of women’s marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich a couple of weeks ago. It was a masking agent, often used to cover up the use of illegal substances, rather than a banned substance itself, but the doubt… the doubt.

Now, upon her return from a four-year ban for testing positive for nandrolone, Shelby Houlihan immediately and controversially became the U.S. Champion in the 5,000 meters. The doping conversation has always gone hand in hand with athletics, so I don’t necessarily want to talk directly about the shadow that doping casts on all competitive sport. I want to talk about what we want from running as followers rather than competitors.

When does sport become a spectacle?

What changes the emphasis from competition to entertainment? Money, essentially. Advertising, gambling, media coverage, athlete endorsements, paying customers demanding value for their hard-earned money.

In its purest form, however, sport doesn’t need an audience. It’s only about the athletes competing against one another. Think of two college wrestlers in a spartan gym trying to get the pin. Consider a pair of boxers sparring for that knockout punch. A full track of runners racing their lanes to the finish line.

That is competition. That is sport.

The thing is, those vulgar displays of human excellence make for incredibly compelling events that the rest of us want to witness first-hand. It’s entertaining to see humans fiercely pitted against one another. It’s the ultimate in reality television, and while pure competition has its merits, many simply want to see a human body taken to its limits. It might not actually matter to the viewer if the person breaking a record is juiced up to the gills on performance-enhancing drugs.

That is entertainment. That is the viewing of a spectacle.

What do we want?

While there are myriad tangible reasons (sponsorships, glory, decades of hard work) for athletes to crave being the name at the top of the list, we want to see a level playing field, because the best games have clear boundaries set out, even if the rules are constantly updated to reflect new technologies and other nuances. The sport’s doping rules allow every athlete to believe that they can reach their maximum level with the right effort and infrastructure in place. It’s clean, fair competition.

Life isn’t fair, though. With the Olympic Games, the pinnacle of athletic excellence, only coming around every four years, peak training must be timed to perfection. A rogue injury or unseasonably warm day might relegate a lifetime of discipline to a footnote rather than a headline. It makes it slightly easier to understand why someone might choose a shortcut to glory, even if they’ll always know it’s not real.

Where do you draw the line?