Talking dirty: Anti-doping’s stigmatizing rhetoric and its impact on the unintentional doper

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the principal body responsible for leading global efforts to address the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport. Central to WADA’s strategic approach has been the framing of PED use as a form of cheating, a morally deviant behaviour that undermines the integrity of competition. This moralised discourse constructs doping not merely as a regulatory infraction but as an ethical transgression, reinforcing a dichotomy between “clean” and “dirty” athletes. As a result, athletes who are found to have violated anti-doping rules are often subject to public condemnation, exclusion, and reputational damage, phenomena that amount to public shaming. Drawing upon Erving Goffman’s (1963) seminal sociological work on stigma, this paper critically examines the harmful consequences of this prevailing narrative, particularly for athletes who unintentionally consume banned substances. These individuals, whose infractions may arise from contaminated supplements, mislabelled medications, or inadvertent exposure, are nonetheless subjected to similar treatment as those who engage in deliberate PED use. By failing to account for the complexity and nuance of such cases, the dominant moral framing perpetuates stigma and exacerbates harm. By highlighting these issues, we call for greater awareness and reflection on doping stigma and the language we use to discuss doping.