Dr. Ian Ritchie’s interest in socio-cultural aspects of sport and physical activity started during his days as an athlete. “While there are obvious positive benefits to be derived from physical activity and competitive sport,” he says “serious sport at the very highest levels does not always provide the best role model for the general public”. The most obvious example of this is the use of performance-enhancing drugs; despite decades of prohibitions, the problem continues unabated.

To understand this problem, Dr. Ritchie alongside Dr. Rob Beamish at Queen’s University conducted a thorough sociological and historical analysis of high- performance sport in the latter half of the twentieth century. The results, presented in the recently published Fastest, Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High- performance Sport (London and New York: Routledge, 2006) explain why drug prohibitions have, and will continue to fail. “The systematic use of drugs became an integral part of high-performance national sport systems long before deterrents or even the rules themselves existed at all” explains Dr. Ritchie. The result has been a state of perpetual motion in which the problem remains undeterred, with rules and deterrents constantly trying to play ‘catch-up’ with athletes who use drugs. “More importantly”, continues Dr. Ritchie “despite rhetoric to the contrary, it was active decisions on the part of the International Olympic Committee that led to the particular trajectory of high-performance sport that would encourage, not discourage, the use of drugs”.

Dr. Ritchie’s claims in Fastest, Highest, Strongest represent only a part of a bigger research agenda, in which he is attempting to analyze the full consequences of elite high-performance sport. “A full analysis of the consequences of high-performance sport is necessary”, Dr. Ritchie claims, “because this type of sport has occurred, in a sense ‘behind our backs’ – we assume it to be inherently good without thinking fully about its consequences”. These consequences are important in the Canadian context, because of the need to balance federal resources and money to high- performance sport, with those being allocated to general physical activity and recreation. “Disturbingly” says Dr. Ritchie, “as high-performance athletes become more visible in the sports pages, general activity rates across all ages, most importantly children, have been falling”.

Dr. Ritchie is embarking on a long term study of the history of science and its application to sport, and on a critical analysis of the Olympic Games, specifically in the Canadian context. “My goal is to re-envision sport through a better understanding of its past” says Dr. Ritchie.