From the modern scientific perspective, Olympia is a ruin at the far end of a fading sense of history that represents little more than the origins from which sport has continuously evolved. Quantitative measurements show continued increases in human performance, equipment efficiency and funding. But some question this athletic evolution. We worry about qualitative issues, such as virtue, meaning and beauty. The source of this contrast is a difference in values: Olympic vs. Efficiency values. Such values establish an ethos in (...) sporting communities that influences how we behave, explain and even conceptualize our activities. I argue from the perspectives of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics and politics, that Olympic Ethos is needed to balance out the modern Efficiency Ethos, which threatens to dehumanize sport. (shrink)

The use of certain performance-enhancing drugs (PED) is banned in sport. I discuss critically standard justifications of the ban based on arguments from two widely used criteria: fairness and harms to health. I argue that these arguments on their own are inadequate, and only make sense within a normative understanding of athletic performance and the value of sport. In the discourse over PED, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” performance has exerted significant impact. I examine whether the distinction makes sense (...) from a moral point of view. I propose an understanding of “natural” athletic performance by combining biological knowledge of training with an interpretation of the normative structure of sport. I conclude that this understanding can serve as moral justification of the PED ban and enable critical and analytically based line drawing between acceptable and nonacceptable performance-enhancing means in sport. (shrink)