Why do female athletes dope?

Earlier this year, Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was accused of doping.

After winning gold at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, tests conducted three months earlier revealed traces of a banned substance in her sample.

It wasn’t steroids, but a substance called trimetazidine pedalled as a heart medication but said to boost endurance and efficiency in blood circulation. Valieva was 15 years old.

In 2014, in the wake of the Winter Games in Sochi, whistleblower Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov revealed that Russia had been running a state-controlled doping program. Not only had he, as a doctor, administered illegal substances to athletes, their urine samples had been either deliberately misplaced or swapped out for clean samples by the official testing lab.

The whole process was overseen by the Russian sports ministry and is said to have been a deliberate tactic employed by the government to showcase improved performance after Russia’s “abysmal” medal count (15 in total) at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

As a result, Russia has been officially banned from participating in the Olympic Games and other major international sporting events since 2015.

The athletes, including Kamila Valieva, are allowed to compete but not to represent their country. They do not compete under the Russian flag, but under a “Russian Olympic Committee” banner. Their team emblem contains no national colours – it is a bland patch that bears only the Olympic logo.

Competing as a Russian athlete has become more and more difficult. (Photo by Andy Cheung/Getty Images)

Valieva is assumed to have fallen under a state-run doping system or at the very least a program that was bigger than her, over which she likely had no power.

She is a victim, too. The idea of a nation controlling the performance of its athletes led the New York times to describe Russian Olympic group training as “factory-like” and the female athletes involved in it as “disposable”.

As though Russia’s strategy of churning out elite athletes were less a by-product of nurturing talent and more reminiscent of Black Widow – a Hollywood spy movie that capitalises on the idea that any woman subject to enough conditioning could be utilised and weaponised to meet a state’s target.

This explains one rationale behind doping. Athletes, female or otherwise, may express desire and intent but outcome and result require external assistance.

Coaches, trainers, nutritionists, sports scientists, physiotherapists – behind every high-performing athlete, particularly those selected to compete for their nation, there is likely a team of people helping them succeed. Why shouldn’t “doping doctor” be one of them?

Every time a doping scandal is exposed, there is a public outcry. Perhaps because doping shatters one of the most fundamental illusions keeping spectator sports alive – the belief that athletes are special.

That although they are one of us, they are not like us. We look to them because of what sets them apart, we hope – some God-given talent, some natural inclination that we can bank on, draw inspiration from, aspire toward.

They fulfil their dreams and ours in the process. To think that they are ordinary – that without the coach, the team, the drugs – they would be anybody, is to undermine the very notion on which spectatorship relies: that there are people who are exceptional.

Kamila Valieva was a 15-year-old kid from Russia. Perhaps a prodigal talent, perhaps a child engineered by her countrymen.

(Photo by Xavier Laine/Getty Images)

What about athletes like Marion Jones? No one could deny that she was exceptional – not before her doping scandal, and some not even after.

Although it was over 20 years ago, her break-out Olympic Games will still feel familiar – it was held in Sydney, Australia after all. In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Marion Jones was already being hailed as a global track-star.

Black, beautiful, well-spoken and more importantly a phenomenally athletic all-rounder, it was as though she were made for the career she chose. Her entire life she had excelled at both track and basketball and looking at her, it didn’t come as any surprise.

She took home three gold medals at the Sydney Olympics, in the 100m and 200m as well as in the 4x400m relay. She won a further two bronze medals in long-jump and in the 4x100m relay. Both relay races would later become the source of a seven-party legal dispute. She would eventually be stripped of all five medals.

Similar to Lance Armstrong, her reactive response to doping allegations did not help her defence nor her reputation years later. She denied, vehemently, and sued whom she could. She did not tell the truth under oath.

At the time, with accusations that she had taken steroids for most of her sporting career, the public went from disbelief to acceptance and finally to complete dismissal.

In the same way Lance Armstrong continues to enjoy a tarnished legacy that is at least partly founded on bona fide talent and ability, both he and Marion Jones prove one thing: audiences don’t like being lied to. A performance that leads to a win may not be a lie, but pretending the win was secured without the help of performance-enhancing drugs when it was, certainly feels like one.

A write-up about Jones on Recognize summarises what we were all thinking at the time: “Jones was already good enough. She cheated to gain a competitive advantage that she didn’t even need.” Instead of asking why female athletes dope, perhaps it is easier to find an answer to the question: why shouldn’t they dope?

Performance is about more than just contest. The Olympic Games is a platform not just for athletes to compete for a score and a medal but for an audience, who invests their interest in them. We watch them compete for themselves but we hope they are competing for us too.

Marion Jones eventually owned up to her doping but in doing so, her relay team mates were also stripped of the medals they won alongside her. Losing her dream cost them theirs too. Not to mention every disillusioned fan who had been watching those Games, rooting for her.

She was famously quoted as saying: “I would have won without drugs.”

Well, you know what Marion? Even if you hadn’t won, if it had been honest, we would have cheered for you anyway.