Central Annals of Sports Medicine and Research Cite this article: Trabal P, Zubizarreta E (2020) The Concept of “Risk” in the Fight against Doping. Ann Sports Med Res 7(1): 1143. *Corresponding author Patrick Trabal, Institute of Social Sciences of Politics, Paris Nanterre University, France, Email: ptrabal@ parisnanterre.fr Submitted: 27 February 2020 Accepted: 21 March 2020 Published: 24 March 2020 ISSN: 2379-0571 Copyright © 2020 Trabal P, et al. OPEN ACCESS Mini Review The Concept of “Risk” in the Fight against Doping Patrick Trabal* and Ekain Zubizarreta Institute of Social Sciences of Politics, Paris Nanterre University, France The fight against doping evolves constantly. While we are writing this paper, institutions are working to implement the 2021 version of the World Anti-Doping Code. However, the process of reflection on the application of a particular measure included in the 2015 Code has not yet been taken very far. We refer to the invitation to become a «lanceur d’alerte” (in French) or “whistleblower” (in English), that is, to “report” any suspicious practice. But these terms are not synonymous. Beyond a question of translation, the history of these two notions shows very different cultures and practices. We propose to clarify them before discussing the consequences of this tension on anti-doping practices and on this chimera that is harmonization. THE NOTION OF “LANCEUR D’ALERTE” Chateauraynaud and Torny, developers of a pragmatic sociology of risks (1999) [1], are interested in the processes by which social actors manage to identify a risk or not and to raise an alert to other social actors likely to authenticate it and take the necessary measures to eradicate it or to limit it. The entire process, from the necessary vigilance until its authentication, was the subject of a detailed analysis that was conducted studying sanitary and technological issues. These sociologists were the first to create and develop sociologically this notion of “lanceur d’alerte” in order to designate a social actor who cares about a general interest and decides to make a major risk public, often putting at risk his own situation (especially when he or she acts against the institution he or she belongs to or against his or her interest). A good example is that of a few doctors in the 1950s who, worried about the dangers run by sportspeople using drugs, alerted decision-makers [2]. Unlike many “lanceurs d’alerte” who fail to mobilize, these doctors managed to organize the famous colloquium of Uriage-les-Bains (1963) which led to the first definition of doping and, two years later, to the first anti-doping legislation (Le Noé, 2001) [3]. The production of evidence is at the heart of the lanceur d’alerte activity (Chateauraynaud, 2004) [4]. If the evidence is too weak, the principle of “precaution” can be invoked to prevent the alert from being transmitted (Chateauraynaud and Torny, 1999 [4], Chateauraynaud 2011) [5]. We find this notion heuristic to describe the work of doctors who were worried about the dangerousness of the consumption of products, as well as the work of other social actors (doctors, pharmacists, police, etc.) who are worried about the diversion of drugs by athletes, counterfeit products made under precarious sanitary conditions or the circulation and trivialization of certain molecules. But is the notion useful to designate an actor who wants to “alert” the anti-doping authorities (WADA, ONAD, FI) of suspicious behaviour by an athlete or by his or her staff? To assert this, it would be necessary to clarify if the problematic practice presents a risk. We can certainly argue that sport is threatened but we are very far from the danger level that the initial concept carried. The figure of the “informer” is here more appropriate. The concept of “denunciation” (“dénonciation” in French) developed by Boltanski in 2004 [6], involves a work of de- particularization, which aims to show that the social actor that is denouncing an activity is not driven by the search of particular interests. The denunciation would need to have four different elements in order to be taken seriously: a victim, a person denouncing an activity (who precisely cannot be the victim or it would not respect the principle of de-particularization), a persecutor and an arbitrator or a body with the power to end injustice. In the book “Le sport et ses affaires”(Sport and its issues) Duret and Trabal (2001) [7] analysed the denunciation processes in sport as well as their regulation. They showed that many denunciations struggled to be taken seriously, either because the victim was the social actor making the denunciation (an athlete complaining that his competitor has doped may be accused of being a bad player) or because the referee was itself part of the denounced activities. During our researches in anti-doping we have acknowledged that many French social actors interpreted this invitation to denounce doping facts as a call to inform. In France, the notion of “informer” is marked by the recent national history. During the Second World War, French were ordered to inform of the presence of Jews. The notion is therefore not related to the search of general interest, as can be the case for the notions of “lanceur d’alerte” or “dénoncatieur” (the person making a denunciation). Informers pursue their own particular interests. In an environment as competitive as sports world, this pejorative term can correspond to different realities: the defence of one