BUSS4 - Culture - What can we learn about culture from cycling?

I’m a huge cycling fan and you would need to have been living on a different planet to be unaware of the recent scandal surrounding cycling and in particular, Lance Armstrong. Cycling and the Lance Armstrong story is rich with material that can help us understand culture, the factors effecting culture and the issues and problems of changing culture.Cycling has a long association with doping and in particular, blood doping. Blood doping involves boosting the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream in order to enhance cycling performance. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the muscles and therefore a higher concentration of red blood cells can improve a cyclists aerobic capacity and endurance. Cycling’s biggest race, the Tour De France is synonymous with doping and out of the last 33 winners, 17 have been caught (and I emphasis, caught). The question is why? The Tour De France is a 3 week race that covers 2000 miles with only 2 rest days. This means that the cyclists ride around 105 miles per day. Allegations of doping and cheating have surrounded the Tour since it began in 1903 with cyclists using alcohol and other substances to dull the pain when competing and completing such huge distances. The winner of the Tour in 1904 was stripped of the title when it was discovered that he actually took the train for part of the course!From the above we can see that over the years, a ‘culture’ of doping and cheating has evolved and this came to the fore during the Lance Armstrong years. Lance won the Tour 7 years in a row after successfully beating cancer and has recently admitted to doping during all 7 victories. In his recent interview with Oprah, he said that he didn’t believe doping was cheating and that doping was so prevalent that it just created a level of playing field. From this statement, we can see that ‘culture’ can have a huge bearing on a person’s behaviour. It is perhaps useful here to pause and think of what culture actually is. I like to think of culture as ‘the way we do things around here’. Another good way of looking at culture is that culture consists of the norms of behaviour. So, doping in cycling was to a large extent ‘normal behaviour’ and quite simply the ‘way things are done around here’The British cyclist, David Millar started his career fiercely opposed to doping and resisted it for most of his cycling career. He succumbed in 2004 and was subsequently banned for 2 years. One of the main reasons behind his decision to dope was down to the culture of doping within cycling. The majority of cyclists were doing it and if a cyclist ever wanted to achievesuccess then this was seen as perhaps the only way of doing it. Millar won a cycling championship after doping had gained him an estimated 25 seconds in the race. Indeed, the ‘culture’ of doping within cycling directly affected performance as well as shaping his behaviour.This leads me finally onto the subject of some of the problems of changing culture and in particular, the culture of doping within cycling. Cyclists face bans, shame and humiliation if they are caught yet it still goes on. Only two days ago another cyclist tested positive and has been banned from this year’s Tour. Doping has been around cycling and in particularthe Tour since the early 1900’s. Can a culture that is so ingrained ever be changed? One of the main problems of changing the culture, in my opinion, is that many cyclists believe that every other cyclist is doing it and therefore in order to compete they must also dope. Changing any culture requires someone to take a stand and requires strong leadership. It needs someone at the top or a large enough group of people to decide that the old way isn’t the best way or indeed the right way then start acting differently enlisting others to act differently. This is easier if the new way produces better results and if these results are openly communicated and celebrated.Step forward Team Sky and in particular Sir David Brailsford who set out with the objective of winning the Tour within 5 years with a clean British cyclist. Team Sky are fiercely anti-doping and everyone who works there (cyclists included) need to sign a form to say that they have never doped otherwise they will be fired and/ or thrown of the team. Sir David managed to achieve his objective when Bradley Wiggins won last year’s tour. The fact that it was achieved with a clean rider has been widely publicised. Is the culture of doping within cycling about to change? Some would say so. However, the fact that yet another cyclist has recently tested positive and banned shows that changing the culture will not be a process that can happen overnight.