Promoting athlete welfare: A proposal for an international surveillance system

Abstract

Historically, there has been a range of different policies put in place to eradicate maltreatment of athletes. Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, we can identify that these policies have been introduced at all but the macro/international level, but also that they have had very little success. In spite of the proliferation of codes of conduct for coaches as well as policies to address the safeguarding of athletes, incidents of athlete maltreatment by coaches continue to emerge internationally, typically with evidence of the presence of bystanders who chose to remain silent. This paper outlines a possibility for a macro scale international policy for coaching with the goal of policing and reducing harmful behaviours towards athletes. As our starting point, we use Latour’s (2005) model of the oligopticon, a method of surveillance that extends Bentham’s panopticon through allowing information to be collected from multiple sources and brought together in a central point. An example of an oligopticon is WADA, which collects information not only from doping testing, but from other athletes, athlete performance at a range of competitions and even customs agents. We suggest that we could adopt a related policy for addressing maltreatment of athletes with the goal of creating a surveillance system that encourages coaches to adopt athlete-centred approaches, and encourages bystanders to report problematic coaching behaviours.