No va sobre la sangre. Operación Puerto y el fin de la modernidad

Abstract

The Spanish doping case known as Operacion Puerto exists within the framework of the abandonment of old notions of law and the construction of a new functional global system. Operacion Puerto exemplifies Verner Moeller’s fear that anti doping policy signals the end of modernity - where law is made in the media as much as it is made in the courts. Operacion Puerto is a perfect example of the distance that exists between the rhetoric of the media crisis surrounding doping and pro cycling and the actual reality of the material processes that are occurring as cycling goes through the process of global structural readjustment and the construction of the new global cycling cartography. Legitimacy is made through the management of crisis and events – exception, functionality and spectacle; under the guise of the just war against the evil of doping.