The phenomenon of doping in sports has been explored extensively from a bio-medical and legal perspective. Anti-doping organisations worldwide release testing and violations figures annually, and the track record of India has been substandard. The social dimensions associated with the act are relatively lesser explored, and when it comes to the Indian context, there exists a lacuna of anthropologically informed studies to shed light on doping as a socially defined practice. The present study attempts to analyse doping among junior sprint athletes in India employing the framework of body project as expounded by Chris Shilling. The study employs the methodology of ethnography and the act of apprenticeship to understand the construction of a sporting body of the athlete and what inflexion points can lead to the triggering of doping-inclined behaviour. An athlete's body is under a constant disciplinary regime of intense training, coaches and elderly athletes. The body of athletes in and out of the competitive field gets bombarded with information related to nutritional supplements and performance enhancement. A network of actors in the form of fellow athletes, elderly athletes, and coaches operates to convince athletes to use doping substances for athletic performance enhancement. Therefore, the athlete's body project comprises a multitude of social actors working in different nodes to create a sporting body that works as a site of scientific capitalism. To frame effective anti-doping policies and awareness programs, it becomes essential to understand how athletic bodies get constructed and what sociological factors trigger doping behaviour that gets explained through cumulative recalibration.
