HOW PRINCETON PROFESSOR WOULD STOP CHEATING | ROADMAN PODCAST

Peter Singer joins Anthony for another Roadman Cycling Podcast

Stopping cheating in sport needs to be a priority but the challenges to fair sport are more potent than ever.

Is it fair to have a trans athlete competing in female sport?

Is doping a bigger problem than ever?

Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics. In this conversation with Anthony they talk about fairness, trans athletes, doping and much more.

Key Takeaways

• Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer argues that fairness in sport requires clear, evidence-based criteria — not emotional reactions — when addressing contentious issues like transgender athlete eligibility and doping enforcement
• The biological advantages conferred by male puberty (bone density, muscle mass, cardiovascular capacity) persist even after hormone therapy, making simple testosterone-level thresholds an incomplete solution for competitive fairness
• Doping remains a bigger threat to sport integrity than most fans realise — Singer suggests that only radical transparency (biological passport data made public, lifetime bans for first offences) would shift the cost-benefit calculation enough to deter cheaters
• The "spirit of sport" argument is often used selectively — we accept altitude tents, marginal gains technology, and vastly unequal team budgets, but draw moral lines at other performance enhancements in ways that aren't always logically consistent
• Ultimately, sport governing bodies need philosophers and ethicists at the table alongside scientists and administrators — the hardest questions in modern sport are moral ones, not just technical ones