"I have never taken performance enhancing drugs and I never will": drug discourse in the Shane Warne case.
This study investigates the discursive management of taking prohibited substances in sport. In particular, it explores how one high-profile athlete, Australian cricketer Shane Warne, accounted for his drug-taking behavior when talking to the media. Discursive psychology (DP) is used as the theoretical and methodological framework to study drug discourses in sport. Emphasis in DP is on making explicit how psychological concepts (e.g., drug explanations) are used in everyday talk to perform certain actions. The research data is Warne's first public press statement concerning his 2003 positive test for hydrochlorothiazide and amiloride. Analysis reveals that Warne constructed his drug taking as not being related to performance enhancement and substantiated this with a history of negative test results. Warne worked up his taking as the result of ignorance rather than deliberate deception. Further, he presented this as a one-off event and not reflective of systematic drug usage. It is argued in this study that to better understand drug taking in sport, sport researchers need to understand how athletes talk about drugs. For it is through talk that most sporting activities are conducted and maintained, and it is this talk that needs to be understood and analyzed.
Lamont-Mills
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A
Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld, Australia. lamontm@usq.edu.au
Christensen
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S
D001315:Australia; D004300:Doping in Sports; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D014342:Truth Disclosure