Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-07-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20000907.1.4-020"2
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".
Mr President, I would first like to support what Mr Mennea has said, and then to ask this question: do we see the social significance of sport as the old ‘bread and circuses’ or ‘bread and sport’, or do we see it as a means of improving health and building moral fibre? It has never been clear what social significance we should attribute to it.
By and large, I have to say that the top-level sport we are generally talking about here is not necessarily a healthy pursuit, any more than the extreme sports that I go in for, or used to do. Only the gods on Mount Olympus can say whether top-level sport is healthy or not – we certainly cannot.
Let me turn to the facts now. Because of globalisation, our consumer society has become ever more hungry for stars, sensations and records. So, officials and businessmen have turned ‘bread and sport’ into a branch of show business that is now one of the biggest in the world, and the process of commercialisation, is of course, continuing. And the systematic doping that this commercialisation encourages is simply intensifying this process.
Those are the facts of the matter. There is no way we can change those facts unless we create greater transparency, and unless we set up an independent anti-doping agency which is accessible to everyone and which everyone understands."@en1
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