Bertrand Fincoeur is a research fellow at the Institute of Sports Sciences of the University of Lausanne and a lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Lausanne, Switzerland). He completed a PhD in criminology (KU Leuven, Belgium) about the doping market in Belgian and French elite cycling. His research interests focus on controversial issues in sports (doping, football hooliganism, match fixing). Bertrand visited the Sport, Diversity and Social Change research group in April, on his way to ISSA 2019 in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Jora Broerse: How did you become a researcher and what are you interested in?
Bertrand Fincoeur: I have always been interested in research. When I undertook my Masters in 2003 I worked as a research assistant at the University of Liege (Belgium) and a professor then let me know that I could be hired after my master thesis. I then started with two projects: the first one on drug policies and the second one on football hooliganism. The latter was commissioned by the Belgian Home Office and, among other things, I looked at how to prevent fan violence. After one year, I was offered to manage a social prevention programme against football violence (fan coaching). But quite rapidly I missed academic research, especially the freedom and autonomy it provides.
JB: So how did you decide to start a PhD?
BF: Well, when I was fan-coaching manager, I was contacted by the University of Lausanne. They had obtained a WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) research grant to study the doping culture among young cyclists in different countries. Some data collection had to be done in Belgium and they struggled to find someone to do it. They were told that someone had some research experience on drugs and sports-related crime. That was me! That is how I started to work on doping. I did the job besides my other activities. In the meantime, I became manager of an international observatory of crime across Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. One day, I received an email from a professor at KU Leuven. She had a strong experience on drug markets and organised crime, and she wanted to develop a project on the doping market. She asked me if we could have a phone call. We discussed for one hour and at the end she offered me a position to do a PhD in criminology in Leuven. I was already 31 but I was not fully happy in my job and I very much like new challenges. I did accept her proposal, and I spent four amazing years in Leuven!
JB: You already had a diverse professional background before doing the PhD.
BF: Yes, indeed, but in my roles outside academia, I always tried to have a helicopter view on the practice, some critical distance. In many organisations other than university, the political correctness and hierarchies can prevent you from being too critical. And again, research offers an incredible freedom of speech. Actually, I feel like if it is not so easy to work in other environments once you have experienced the researcher’s life.
JB: What did you find difficult as a PhD student?
BF: One thing I have had to learn was fitting into a university with a somewhat different approach to science. Actually, I come from the French-speaking part of Belgium. Yet, a main difference between the “French” and the “Anglo-Saxon” scientific culture is that the latter is more about coming to the point, more structured, although perhaps sometimes less creative. But if you want to play at the international academic level you need to go in that direction. Still, during my PhD, I had the opportunity to have a scholarship in Lausanne and at the end of my PhD I returned there and joined the Institute of Sports Sciences.
JB: So during the PhD you tried to fit into this Anglo Saxon research style, did that change you as a researcher and how you asked questions?
BF: I would probably say yes, at least, for example, in terms of the way you write an article or an application. That’s funny, when I arrived a few years ago in Leuven, I remember a Dutch-speaking professor told me “Welcome in the real world”. That was all but condescending, and to some extent he was right! Maybe I have been quite successful in becoming more Flemish, I don’t know, haha.
JB: Here in Melbourne (and elsewhere) there is a growing focus on knowledge translation. Making research findings applicable and valuable outside academia can be a challenge. How do you think academics can make knowledge transferrable?
BF: That is a good but difficult question. In Lausanne, we have a lot of opportunities to meet people working for sports federations since many of them have their headquarters around. Very often, we think about how to transfer knowledge to policy, but I have no recipe to implement it effectively. Obviously, I sometimes wonder whether the people are very open to change. However, that would be too simple to consider that practitioners and/or policy-makers are not enough open to what we can offer. Our ideas as scientists are not always easy to transfer or it is not even feasible. And that is part of the problem, not only because we use vague concepts or too complicated terminology. Also important is how we can meet their expectations. There might be a gap between theoretical recommendations and what is applicable. How to reduce this gap is part of our responsibility.
JB: And you mentioned the audience might not always be interested in what’s happening in academia?
BF: Yes, that can be a problem: not all the institutions are open to change. But actually I’m interested in the dynamics between, for example, sports federations and academics. Last year, we organised the ISSA (International Sociology of Sport Association) conference. I had settled a panel titled ‘Are social scientists parasites of sports organisations?’. Obviously, we scientists often need sports organisations to feed our research projects, for example to gain access to athletes or policy documents. But do they really need us? What is our role as scientists? Are we supposed to contribute to help transform or improve sports organisations? How to be well-informed and remain critical towards organisations from which we hope getting research funds? It may be a bit uncomfortable, for example, to defend harm reduction policies in sport and apply for a WADA research grant. I don’t say we have to be purely strategic but that’s something we have to deal with and that may be very difficult.
JB: What was the driving force behind shifting your research from cycling to MMA (Mixed Martial Arts)?
BF: Elite riders receive much attention from the media, from the public. They are targeted by anti- doping authorities but they don’t really need the attention from researchers, and especially not when it concerns doping issues! I used to constantly justify that my aim is not to denounce scandals. Of course, if you study doping, you need to be prepared to face these questions. But that’s difficult to obtain interviews and once you have them, there is always an issue of reliability. Very often, you collect a lot of socially desirable responses. Maybe it is the truth, maybe it’s not. Anyway. I wanted to have people who were a bit less unhappy to speak to me about a topic they also feel less sensitive about.
JB: In cycling you were the boeman(bogeyman) and in MMA you’re the ‘saviour’?
BF: Oh, I don’t know if I could ever say I’m a saviour, haha, but MMA fighters are much more open to interviews on performance enhancement. MMA has a very different history than cycling regarding doping scandals. Athletes are somewhat less mistrustful. In addition, from a social science perspective, the doping issue in MMA is still emerging while much has been said on cycling. I appreciate being a bit a “pioneer”, if you like. I am still in the preparation stages of my MMA research but that’s the stage I appreciate the most. How you will tackle the problem. How to enter the field.
JB: Everything is still possible…
BF: Haha yes.
JB: Would looking at MMA help understanding drug use in sport in general?
BF: Probably, or hopefully! I’m also interested in how “emerging sports” deal with integrity concerns. I could have chosen another sport but I have decided to focus on MMA. I had no background or experience in this sport but that is also what I like. Something new to discover.
JB: At the end of the seminar you delivered to our research group, you talked about your stance on doping. Can you describe how your stance on doping relates to healthy bodies?
BF: In sport in general, and in elite sport in particular, there are many inequalities, not least the financial one. Even vis-à-vis very young sportspeople. As a parent, if you have free time to bring your kids to a competition, to buy them the best material, to pay them some extra ski lessons, whatever, it may make in the end the difference with the guy who didn’t have the same chances. Elite sport is driven by a lot of social, cultural, economic inequalities. Elite sport also promotes the fact that you should perform at all levels: in your approach of nutrition, training, equipment… The only thing that is considered unfair and unacceptable is drug use. So my first reaction is why? Why would that be less acceptable to be professional with pharmacology than via other kinds of enhancement? Why don’t we accept drugs but we accept other inequalities? The level playing field is not necessarily more seriously threatened by the consumption of some performance-enhancing drugs.
Then there is the health reasoning, of course. However, sports is full of things which are unhealthy. In cycling, the risk of death or serious injury arising from a fall is much higher than from doping. Idem ditto concerning speed. Should we perhaps prohibit cycling at all? For health reasons, the best argument would probably be to prohibit elite sport. Elite sport is fundamentally unhealthy. Anti-doping pretends to protect athletes’ health, OK, but if sports organisations are concerned with athletes’ health, they should, for example, also oblige an injured athlete to withdraw from his/her race. I don’t understand how one could suspend an athlete who took cortisone maybe for the first time ever and allow another one competing despite a broken shoulder. I observe a moral distinction made between different types of enhancement and health risks. Understanding the reasons underpinning such distinction can be hard to say.
I’m not in favour of a legalisation of doping. It does not make any sense since several substances or methods may obviously have harmful effects. My argument is that health damaging effects should be the only criteria to decide whether or not a product is banned. But you know that this is not the case. Maybe you think I’m thought-provoking but in fact my stance towards doping is rather mainstream within the scholarly community of doping researchers. Just to recall what we discussed earlier about knowledge transfer, it is worth to notice that such stance is not very popular among policy-makers. That’s a paradox and evidence we still have some work as social science researchers.