The notion that sport is good for you has a long and varied pedigree but has

been especially prominent since its modernization, courtesy of the (ruling-class,

masculine, white) public school ethos of Victorian England (Mangan, 1981) (see
Chapter 2). As the era of liberal capitalism gave way to that of organized
capitalism, the emphasis on sports potential both to build character appropriate
to elite standing and governance and to offer a means of discipline for workingclass youths yielded increasingly to an emphasis on its general capacity to
enhance individual health. Each emphasis, or rhetoric, owed much to system
imperatives. But is sport good for you? Is it conducive to positive health and
longevity? Setting aside the ideological baggage such a proposition almost
always conceals, we need to remember that sport conjures up activities with no
discernible core properties in common but rather with family resemblances
(Wittgenstein, 1958). Some sporting activities may be conducive to health and
longevity, others not; and it is likely often to be a matter of degree (Scambler et
al., 2004). (p. 76).
The Health Education Authority (1996: 1) has summarized the health return
on this form of exercise as follows: lower levels of all-cause mortality; reduced
risk of developing coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension and non-insulin
dependent diabetes mellitus; better control of obesity; possible protection
against some cancers; decreased levels of moderate depression and anxiety;
maintenance of healthy bones and possible prevention of osteoporosis; and
benets for those with existing diseases, particularly for those with controlled
hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, mild depression and chronic anxiety. It is
important to stress that moderate, rhythmic and regular exercise is dened here
as ranging from brisk walking, running or swimming for 2030 minutes about
three times each week (Smith and Jacobson, 1988: 126), to energetic getting
about or the regular climbing of stairs for older people (Morris et al., 1980). (pp.
76-77).
Evidence-based guidelines from the English health authorities suggest that
whether an individual is exercising on his or her own or in a group, it is a focus on
self-development, effort and mastery of tasks that most impacts on mood and
psychological well-being (Grant, 2000). This task orientation is compared
favourably to ego orientation, where exercisers strive to be better than others
and where a competitive ethos prevails. Many sports are of course inherently
competitive. Waddington (2000: 413) afrms that non-competitive exercise and

competitive sport tend to involve different sets of social relations, and that the
former is more likely than the latter to involve rhythmic movements and to be
under the control of the individual participant. Sport is the more complex activity
(see Elias and Dunning, 1986). Given the game pattern of most sports, the
individual participant has no choice but to cede control over his or her own
movements and the pace and intensity at which he or she is able to play.
Movement easily becomes the antithesis of rhythmic and bursts of anaerobic
activity become paradigmatic (Waddington, 2000). (p. 77).
The Sports Council also distinguished different sports by risk of injury. Top of
the list was rugby, with an injury rate of 59 per 100 participants per four weeks.
Second in dangerousness was soccer (39), followed by martial arts (26), hockey
(25) and cricket (20). Rugby also headed the list of highrisk sports in a New
Zealand study (Hume and Marshall, 1994). A number of distinctions are relevant
to the differential risk of injury. That between exercise and sport remains basic,
but to this might be added others, for example between (professional) elite and
(amateur) mass sport, and between contact and non-contact sports. (p. 78).
by any measure, professional sport is a violent and hazardous workplace,
replete with its own unique forms of industrial disease. No other milieu,
including the risky and labour-intensive settings of miners, oil drillers, or
construction site workers, can compare with the routine injuries of team sports
such as football, ice-hockey, soccer, rugby and the like. (Young, citirano u
Scambler, 2005: 79).
There is a conict in the sport between the commercial and the playing sides.
Clubs want to generate more money to balance the books but the risk is that too
much is asked of the players. It is not just about matches, though I think there
are too many: we have contact training twice a week, and even though players
wear protective suits there is the risk of injury ... The trouble with the British
season is that there is little let-up in it. Once you start in September, you are
involved in a non-stop process of build-up and playing. There is little room for
recovery. Staleness and boredom creep in and injuries pile up. The busiest
members of a clubs management are the physio and the masseur ... Players may
be well paid but that does not mean we have bought their hearts and bodies.
There is a danger we will turn them into a scrapheap... (Peter Thornburn, citirano
u Scambler, 2005: 79).

Self-evidently there is a great deal of money to be made from exercise/sport,

and with less restraint in disorganized than in organized capitalism. The notion of
identity, and especially that accomplished in and through the body, is particularly
pertinent here. The issue of identity, linked as it is to globalizing tendencies, the
reinvigoration of class relations, processes of individualization, the
postmodernization of culture, and technologies of the self and governmentality, is
increasingly salient to the recasting of both exercise and sport in disorganized
capitalism. (pp. 82-83).
Many analysts see identity as having a novel and pivotal salience to
individuals (occasioning a crisis of identity) at an historical juncture the advent
of the postmodern culture of disorganized capitalism when identity formation is
theorized as an ever more elusive, uid and impermanent project (leading to a
crisis of identity) (Bendle, 2002). This is due in part to the culture-ideology of
consumerism, itself the product of the resurgence of objective (if, paradoxically,
not subjective) relations of class. Exercise, sport and health, and the bodily
identities with which they have come to be intimately associated, have all
become more malleable, primarily as a function of their hyper-commodication.
People are seduced by such forms of hyper-commodication. Their choices of
bodily identity, image and lifestyle owe much to the logic of the regime of capital
accumulation and relations of class. (p. 83).
Sport, in summary, is not intrinsically healthy; and it is reasonable to argue
that in disorganized capitalism the novel uidity of identity-formation has
permitted developments in sport that are objectively, if not subjectively,
antithetical as well as favourable to health. (p. 84).

Exercise, Sport and Drug Use

The use of recreational drugs has become commonplace since the 1960s, as
have concerns about the use of doping in professional elite sports. The most
common arguments against performance-enhancing drugs in sport are that their
usage is (1) unfair, (2) threatens the health of those athletes who take them, and
(3) undermines the integrity of sport. That this is not all there is to it is
demonstrated by the campaign against the use of recreational drugs by sports
stars qua role models. Nobody has claimed that marijuana boosts performance,

yet the 1990s signalled an end to the former tolerance of its enjoyment by elite
athletes. The IOC in 1990 fell short of listing marijuana as a banned substance,
but it did include it among those drugs subject to certain restrictions: it
disparaged its usage as damaging to youth and a threat to world peace (see
Waddington, 2000: 110). In Britain athletes have been tested for marijuana since
1990 under a system of doping controls operated by the Sports Council; and the
Sports Council has noted with concern growing usage of social drugs throughout
the 1990s. (pp. 85-86).
a new twist to the ongoing dynamic between technologies of drug use and
detection may be immanent. It is reported that undetectable gene doping may be
the next form of high-tech cheating to hit athletic activity. Gene therapy, soon to
be entering human trials for muscle-wasting disorders, promises the restoration
of muscle lost to age or disease. (p. 89).
it is also a dream come true for an athlete bent on doping. The chemicals are
indistinguishable from their natural counterparts and are only generated locally in
the muscle tissue. Nothing enters the bloodstream, so ofcials will have nothing
to detect in a blood or urine test. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has
already asked scientists to help nd ways to prevent gene therapy from
becoming the newest means of doping. But as these treatments enter clinical
trials and, eventually, widespread use, preventing athletes from gaining access to
them could become impossible. (Sweeny, citirano u Scambler, 2005: 89).