The Morality of Competition
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2018
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cycling is again in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. A damning report by MPs argues that Sir Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky "crossed an ethical line." They claim that the Tour de France champion used an asthma drug - which is allowed under the anti-doping rules for medical need - to enhance his performance. The accusation is strenuously denied, but where exactly is the "ethical line"? Isn't it expected that competitors will do anything and everything within the rules to gain an edge? Even the model sportsman Roger Bannister sharpened his running spikes and rubbed graphite on them before breaking the four-minute-mile barrier. It certainly gained him an edge, but not unfairly. In sharp contrast, there are those who believe this latest case is another example of how sport has lost its soul. They say the ideals of 'sportsmanship' and respecting the spirit of the rules have given way to making money, winning at all costs and cheating if you can get away with it. In sport (and in competition generally) there will always be a grey area between what is moral and what is forbidden. Should we aim to narrow that gap, tighten the rules and enforce harsher sanctions? Or can ethical grey areas be a good thing? It could be argued they are essential in order for sportsmanship to shine. In business, they can be seen as necessary for innovation. In our personal lives, they give us moral agency to make important decisions and they provide a means by which we judge others. Surely a regime in which everything is either illegal or acceptable is the black and white landscape of tyranny? And yet - if the line is not simply between winning and losing, where should it be drawn? Witnesses are John-William Devine, Dr Paul Dimeo, Dr Emily Ryall and Ed Smith.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.7 | Good evening, Sir Bradley Wiggins, the greatest cyclist of his, maybe any age, |
| 0:07.6 | continues to protest his innocence after a damning report from MPs, |
| 0:11.3 | accused him of taking a normally banned drug to enhance his performance. |
| 0:15.7 | He was permitted to take it as a treatment for asthma. |
| 0:18.1 | The MPs acknowledge that what he did was legal, but say |
| 0:21.6 | he crossed an ethical line to gain an unfair advantage. The same day that controversy broke, |
| 0:27.2 | Sir Roger Bannister died. The quintessential gentleman amateur apparently broke the four-minute |
| 0:31.9 | mile on a diet of pilchards. Nobody ever accused him of cheating, though it was a good job |
| 0:36.3 | they changed in the open air in those days. |
| 0:39.1 | The truth is that since ancient times, sport has always pushed at and sometimes through the boundaries of what is legal, let alone what is fair. |
| 0:47.0 | Even at the height of the Corinthian era, the 1908 London Olympics, the marathon runners dose themselves on brandy, champagne and rat poison. |
| 0:56.0 | The favourite dropped out dead drunk, the front runner tried to go round the final rap the wrong way, several nearly died. |
| 1:02.5 | It's worse now, perhaps, with so much money and glory at stake, and so many more sophisticated ways to cheat. |
| 1:11.1 | Is there such a thing as sportsmanship anymore? |
| 1:13.4 | Where do you draw an ethical line in such fierce competition? |
| 1:17.0 | More, and this is a wider philosophical question, |
| 1:19.9 | should we be trying harder to put our rules where our ethics are? |
| 1:23.9 | Or is it that grey area in between that makes us moral agents, not just law abiders or law breakers? |
| 1:31.6 | Our moral maze tonight, the panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator on the Times, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, |
| 1:37.1 | the chief executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor, and the priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser. |
| 1:42.6 | I imagine that anybody on this panel who played sport would be |
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