Athletes Dope Case Study

Today nearly every athlete in bicycle racing dopes. This started a long time ago. But why do athletes dope even though they know that it isn’t fair and really bad for their body? To answer this question the paper will investigate why athletes dope by using the game theory and especially the prisoners dilemma. I will start with describing the prisoner’s dilemma, and then continue with doping in bicycle racing and apply it on the prisoner’s dilemma.

Different games theories study strategic interaction in sports. Strategic Interaction is when someone else is thinking similar at the same time and same situation (Dixit & Skeath, 1999).Therefore each person’s choice depends on the choice of others (Chwe, 2013). The analysis of such interactive decision
During that time the athletes didn’t know whether the others will dope or not. Over the time more and more people decided to dope as, a good outcome was only possible with doping. When one person dopes and the others not, only the person who dopes has an advantage. When everyone dopes, everyone has the same advantage and chose the strategy with which he can only be better than the others, which is the Nash-Equilibrium. Nevertheless not doping would be a better solution, as it would avoid damaging the health state and the image of the bicycle sport. Each player would have an equal chance of winning (0.5) and furthermore an outcome with a higher value (Table 1). When both decide to dope the outcome is less (0.25) as each player damages his health and might be expelled by the authority (Table 1). Nowadays everyone dopes, which has the effect that each athlete tries to have a more effective dope and one that can´t be recognised by the
Each athlete dopes because his competitors dope. It is a vicious circle that can only be broken, when the athletes make a consensus that no one dopes. This requires a high level of trust, as usually every athlete prefers the dominant strategy, to be better than the others independent what strategy he chooses. The end of doping in bicycle racing would have a lot of positive results. Primary the athletes would stop damaging their bodies and would start to be measured by their real performance. The sport would be fair, which would also increase its image.

References
Chwe, M. S.-Y. (2013). Jane Austen, game theorist. Princeton and Oxford:Princeton University Press.
Dixit, A., & Skeath, S. (1999). Games of Strategy. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Dr Jana, M. (2012, June 29). Doping part of professional cyclings`s culture. Retrieved November 02, 2014, from The Sport Digest: http://thesportdigest.com/2012/06/doping-part-of-professional-cyclings-culture/
Levine, K. D. (n.d.). What is Game Theory. Retrieved November 02, 2014, from Economic and Game Theory: