Doping (sport)
Encyclopedia
The use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport
is commonly referred to by the term "doping", particularly by those organizations that regulate competitions. The use of performance enhancing drugs is mostly done to improve athletic performance. This is why many sports ban the use of performance enhancing drugs. Another similar use of medical technology is called blood doping
, either by blood transfusion
or use of the hormone erythropoietin
(EPO). The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical by most international sports organizations and especially the International Olympic Committee
, although ethicists have argued that it is little different from the use of new materials in the construction of suits and sporting equipment, which similarly aid performance and can give competitors an unfair advantage over others. The reasons for the ban are mainly the alleged health threat of performance-enhancing drugs, the equality of opportunity for athletes, and the exemplary effect of "clean" ("doping-free") sports for the public.
This entry concerns the use of performance-enhancing drugs by humans.
The use of such drugs is also common in horse racing and other equestrian sports, and in greyhound racing
.
, known as jimsonweed, which contains a number of tropane alkaloids, causing sedation, hallucinations and confusion. By 1889, "dope" was used in connection with the preparation of a thick viscous preparation of opium for smoking, and during the 1890s this extended to any stupefying narcotic drug. In 1900, dope was also defined as "a preparation of drugs designed to influence a racehorse's performance".
mushroom, to increase their physical power a dozen times at the risk of insanity. In more recent times, the German missionary and doctor Albert Schweitzer
wrote of Gabon
in the early 19th century: "The people of the country can, having eaten certain leaves or roots, toil [pagayer] vigorously all day without feeling hungry, thirsty or tired and all the time showing a happiness and gaiety."
A participant in an endurance walking race
in Britain
, Abraham Wood, said in 1807 that he had used laudanum, or opium, to keep him awake for 24 hours while competing against Robert Barclay Allardyce. By April 1877, walking races had stretched to 500 miles and the following year, also at the Agricultural Hall in Islington
, London, to 520 miles. The Illustrated London News chided:
The event proved popular, however, with 20,000 spectators attending each day. Encouraged by this, promoters developed the idea and soon held similar races for cyclists.
The fascination with six-day bicycle races spread across the Atlantic and the same appeal to base instincts brought in the crowds in America as well. And the more spectators paid at the gate, the higher the prizes could be and the greater was the incentive of riders to stay awake—or be kept awake—to ride the greatest distance. Their exhaustion was countered by soigneurs (the French word for "carers"), helpers akin to seconds in boxing
. Among the treatments they supplied was nitroglycerine, a drug used to stimulate the heart after cardiac attacks and which was credited with improving riders' breathing. Riders suffered hallucinations from the exhaustion and perhaps the drugs. The American champion Major Taylor refused to continue the New York race, saying: "I cannot go on with safety, for there is a man chasing me around the ring with a knife in his hand."
Public reaction turned against such trials, whether individual races or in teams of two. One report chided:
The American specialist in doping, Max M. Novich, wrote: "Trainers of the old school who supplied treatments which had cocaine as their base declared with assurance that a rider tired by a six-day race would get his second breath after absorbing these mixtures." John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, said six-day races were "de facto experiments investigating the physiology of stress as well as the substances that might alleviate exhaustion."
Thomas Hicks, an American born in England on January 7, 1875, won the Olympic
marathon in 1904. He crossed the line behind a fellow American, Fred Lorz, whose concept of marathon-running extended to riding half the way in a car thereby disqualifying him. However, Hicks was also aided by outside help. His trainer, Charles Lucas, pulled out a hypodermic and came to his aid as his runner began to struggle.
The use of strychnine, far from being banned, was thought necessary to survive demanding races, says the sports historian Alain Lunzenfichter. The historian of sports doping, Dr Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, said:
Hicks was, in the phrase of the time, "between life and death" but recovered, collected his gold medal a few days later, and lived for almost 60 more years, although he never again took part in athletics.
followed the Tour de France for the French newspaper, Le Petit Parisien
. At Coutances
he heard that the previous year's winner, Henri Pélissier
, his brother Francis
and a third rider, Maurice Ville, had resigned from the competition after an argument with the organiser, Henri Desgrange
. Henri explained the problem—whether or not he had the right to take off a jersey—and went on to talk of drugs, reported in Londres' race diary, in which he invented the phrase Les Forçats de la Route (The Convicts of the Road):
Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off, then of their bodies being drained by diarrhea
, before continuing:
Francis Pélissier said much later: "Londres was a famous reporter but he didn't know about cycling. We kidded him a bit with our cocaine and our pills. Even so, the Tour de France in 1924 was no picnic.
The acceptance of drug-taking in the Tour de France was so complete by 1930, when the race changed to national teams that were to be paid for by the organisers, that the rule book distributed to riders by the organiser, Henri Desgrange
, reminded them that drugs were not among items with which they would be provided.
The use of Pot Belge
by road cyclists in continental Europe exemplifies a cross-over between recreational and performance-enhancing abuse of drugs by sportsman.
is a trade name for amphetamine. The Council of Europe says it first appeared in sport at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It was produced in 1887 and the derivative, Benzedrine, was isolated in the U.S. in 1934. Its perceived effects gave it the street name "speed". British troops used 72 million amphetamine tablets in the Second World War and the RAF got through so many that "Methedrine won the Battle of Britain" according to one report. The problem was that amphetamine leads to a lack of judgement and a willingness to take risks, which in sport could lead to better performances but in fighters and bombers led to more crash landings than the RAF could tolerate. The drug was withdrawn but large stocks remained on the black market. Amphetamine was also used legally as an aid to slimming.
Everton
have long been one of the top clubs in the English association football league. The club were champions of the 1962–63 season. And it was done, according to a national newspaper investigation, with the help of Benzedrine. Word spread after Everton's win that the drug had been involved. The newspaper investigated, cited where the reporter believed it had come from, and quoted the goalkeeper, Albert Dunlop, as saying:
The club agreed that drugs had been used but that they "could not possibly have had any harmful effect." Dunlop, however, said he had become an addict.
Benzedrine and its sister drugs were irresistible in other sports. In November 1942, the Italian cyclist Fausto Coppi
took "seven packets of amphetamine" to beat the world hour record on the track. In 1960, the Danish rider Knud Enemark Jensen collapsed during the 100 km team time trial at the Olympic Games in Rome and died later in hospital. The autopsy showed he had taken amphetamine and another drug, Ronicol
, which dilates the blood vessels. The chairman of the Dutch cycling federation, Piet van Dijk, said of Rome that "dope - whole cartloads -[were] used in such royal quantities."
The British professional Jock Andrews used to joke: "You need never go off-course chasing the peloton in a big race - just follow the trail of empty syringes and dope wrappers."
The Dutch cycling team manager Kees Pellenaars told of a rider in his care:
in the 1930s, and are now used therapeutically in medicine
to stimulate bone
growth and appetite
, induce male puberty
, and treat chronic wasting
conditions, such as cancer
and AIDS
. Anabolic steroids also produce increases in muscle mass and physical strength, and are consequently used in sport
and bodybuilding
to enhance strength or physique. Known side effects include harmful changes in cholesterol
levels (increased Low density lipoprotein
and decreased High density lipoprotein
), acne
, high blood pressure, liver damage
. Some of these effects can be mitigated by taking supplemental drugs.
AAS user in sports began in October 1954, John Ziegler
, a doctor who treated American athletes, went to Vienna
with the American weightlifting team. There he met a Russian physicist who, over "a few drinks", repeatedly asked "What are you giving your boys?" When Ziegler returned the question, the Russian said that his own athletes were being given testosterone.
Returning to America, Ziegler tried weak doses of testosterone on himself, on the American trainer Bob Hoffman and on two lifters, Jim Park and Yaz Kuzahara. All gained more weight and strength than any training programme would produce but there were side-effects. Ziegler sought a drug without after-effects and hit on an anabolic steroid, methandrostenolone
, (Dianabol, DBOL), made in the US in 1958 by Ciba
.
The results were impressive—so impressive that lifters began taking ever more. Steroids spread to other sports where bulk mattered. Paul Lowe, a former running back with the San Diego Chargers American football team, told a California legislative committee on drug abuse in 1970: "We had to take them [steroids] at lunchtime. He [an official] would put them on a little saucer and prescribed them for us to take them and if not he would suggest there might be a fine."
Olympic statistics show the weight of shot putters grew 14 per cent between 1956 and 1972, whereas steeplechasers grew 7.6 per cent. The gold medallist pentathlete Mary Peters said: "A medical research team in the United States attempted to set up extensive research into the effects of steroids on weightlifters and throwers, only to discover that there were so few who weren't taking them that they couldn't establish any worthwhile comparisons."
In 1984, Jay Silvester
, a former four-time Olympian and 1972 silver medalist in the discus who was then with the physical education department of Brigham Young University in the U.S., questioned competitors at that year's Olympics. The range of steroid use he found ranged from 10 mg a day to 100 mg.
Several successful athletes and professional bodybuilders have admitted long-term methandrostenolone use before the drug was banned, including Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Sergio Oliva
. Dianabol is no longer produced but similar drugs are made elsewhere.
The use of anabolic steroids is now banned by all major sporting bodies, including the ATP
, WTA
, ITF
, International Olympic Committee
, FIFA
, UEFA
, all major professional golf tours
, the National Hockey League
, Major League Baseball
, the National Basketball Association
, the European Athletic Association
, WWE
, the NFL
and the UCI
. However drug testing can be wildly inconsistent and, in some instances, has gone unenforced.
's victory in the 100 m at the 1988 Summer Olympics
. He subsequently failed the drug test when stanozolol
was found in his urine. He later admitted to using the steroid as well as Dianabol, Testosterone Cypionate, Furazabol
, and human growth hormone amongst other things. Johnson was therefore stripped of his gold medal as well as recognition of what had been a world-record performance. Carl Lewis
was then promoted one place to take the Olympic gold title. Lewis had also run under the current world record time and was therefore recognized as the new record holder, however, in 2003, Dr. Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee
(USOC) director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, gave copies of documents to Sports Illustrated which revealed that some 100 American athletes who failed drug tests and should have been prevented from competing in the Olympics were nevertheless cleared to compete. Among those athletes was Carl Lewis
. Lewis then broke his silence on allegations that he was the beneficiary of a drugs cover-up, admitting he had tested positive for banned substances but claiming he was just one of "hundreds" of American athletes who were allowed to escape bans, concealed by the USOC. Lewis has now acknowledged that he failed three tests during the 1988 US Olympic trials, which under international rules at the time should have prevented him from competing in the Seoul games two months later.
Former athletes and officials came out against the USOC cover-up. "For so many years I lived it. I knew this was going on, but there's absolutely nothing you can do as an athlete. You have to believe governing bodies are doing what they are supposed to do. And it is obvious they did not", said former American sprinter and 1984 Olympic champion, Evelyn Ashford
.
She brought with her to the West grey tablets and green powder she said had been given to her, to members of her club, and to other athletes. The West German doping analyst Manfred Donike reportedly identified them as anabolic steroids. She said she stayed quiet for a year for the sake of her family. But when her father then lost his job and her sister was expelled from her handball club, she decided to tell her story.
East Germany closed itself to the sporting world in May 1965. In 1977 the shot-putter
Ilona Slupianek, who weighed 93 kg, tested positive for anabolic steroids at the European Cup meeting in Helsinki
and thereafter athletes were tested before they left the country. At the same time, the Kreischa testing laboratory near Dresden
passed into government control, which was reputed to make around 12,000 tests a year on East German athletes but without any being penalised.
The International Amateur Athletics Federation
suspended Slupianek for 12 months, a penalty that ended two days before the European championships in Prague
. In the reverse of what the IAAF hoped, sending her home to East Germany meant she was free to train unchecked with anabolic steroids, if she wanted to, and then compete for another gold medal. Which indeed she won.
After that, almost nothing emerged from the East German sports schools and laboratories. A rare exception was the visit by the sports writer and former athlete, Doug Gilbert of the Edmonton Sun, who said:
Other reports came from the occasional athlete who fled to the West. There were 15 between 1976 and 1979. One, the ski-jumper Hans Georg Aschenbach, said: "Long-distance skiers start having injections to their knees from the age 14 because of their intensive training." He said: "For every Olympic champion, there at least 350 invalids. There are gymnasts among the girls who have to wear corsets from the age of 18 because their spine and their ligaments have become so worn... There are young people so worn out by the intensive training that they come out of it mentally blank [lessivés - washed out], which is even more painful than a deformed spine."
After German reunification, on 26 August 1993 the records were opened and the evidence was there that the Stasi
, the state secret police, supervised systematic doping of East German athletes from 1971 until reunification in 1990. Doping existed in other countries, says the expert Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, both communist and capitalist, but the difference with East Germany was that it was a state policy.
The Sportvereinigung Dynamo (English:Sport Club Dynamo) was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former East Germany. Many former club officials and some athletes found themselves charged after the dissolution of the country. A special page on the internet was created by doping victims trying to gain justice and compensation, listing people involved in doping in the GDR.
State-endorsed doping began with the Cold War when every eastern bloc gold was an ideological victory. From 1974, Manfred Ewald, the head of the GDR's sports federation, imposed blanket doping. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the country of 17 million collected nine gold medals. Four years later the total was 20 and in 1976 it doubled again to 40. Ewald was quoted as having told coaches, "They're still so young and don't have to know everything." He was given a 22-month suspended sentence, to the outrage of his victims.
Often, doping was carried out without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse, one of them is Rica Reinisch
, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts.
Two former Dynamo Berlin
club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 80, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East-Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances. Binus was sentenced in August, Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.
Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drugs test, though Stasi files show that many did, indeed, produce positive tests at Kreischa
, the Saxon laboratory (German:Zentrales Dopingkontroll-Labor des Sportmedizinischen Dienstes) that was at the time approved by the International Olympic Committee, now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS).
In 2005, fifteen years after the end of the GDR, the manufacturer of the drugs in former East Germany, Jenapharm
, still finds itself involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes.
Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes who publicly admitted to doping, accusing their coaches:
Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes disqualified for doping:
Based on the admission by Pollack, the United States Olympic Committee
asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 Summer Olympics
. Despite court rulings in Germany that substantiate claims of systematic doping by some East German swimmers, the IOC executive board announced that it has no intention of revising the Olympic record books. In rejecting the American petition on behalf of its women's medley relay team in Montreal and a similar petition from the British Olympic Association on behalf of Sharron Davies
, the IOC made it clear that it wanted to discourage any such appeals in the future.
(THG) and modafinil
are causing controversy throughout the sporting world, with many high profile cases attracting major press coverage as prominent United States athletes have tested positive for these doping substances. Some athletes who were found to have used modafinil protested as the drug was not on the prohibited list at the time of their offence; however, the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA) maintains it is a substance related to those already banned, so the decisions stand. Modafinil
was added to the list of prohibited substances on 3 August 2004, ten days before the start of the 2004 Summer Olympics
.
Shawne Merriman, NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year 2005, tested positive for steroids and was banned for four games, following two other NFL players—the Falcons' Matt Lehr and the Lions' Shaun Rogers—were suspended for violating the policy
and cocaine
in 1991 being the best known of those.
Football has however been criticised for not sanctioning players implicated in performance enhancing drug scandals. Most recently, Operation Puerto implicated approximately 50 cyclists and 150 sportspersons of other sporting codes, including several "high profile football players". While the cyclists were named and pursued by the governing bodies of cycling, none of the football players were named or punished for their involvement in the doping ring.
team were excluded from the Tour de France
following the discovery of a team car containing large amounts of various performance-enhancing drugs. The team director later admitted that some of the cyclists were routinely given banned substances. Six other teams pulled out in protest including Dutch
team TVM
who left the tour still being questioned by the police
. The Festina scandal overshadowed cyclist Marco Pantani
's tour win, but he himself later failed a test. The infamous "pot belge
" or "Belgian mix" has a decades-long history in pro cycling, among both riders and support staff. More recently David Millar
, the 2003 World-Time Trial Champion, admitted using EPO
, and was stripped of his title and suspended for two years. Still later, Roberto Heras
was stripped of his victory in the 2005 Vuelta a España
and suspended for two years after testing positive for EPO.
Sports lawyer Michelle Gallen has said that the pursuit of doping athletes has turned into a modern day witch-hunt
.
For extensive discussions of doping in the sport of competitive cycling, see:
, were the first international governing body of sport
to take the situation seriously. In 1928 they banned participants from doping, but with little in the way of testing available they had to rely on the word of the athlete that they were clean.
It was not until 1966 that FIFA
(world football) and Union Cycliste Internationale
(cycling
) joined the IAAF in the fight against drugs, closely followed by the International Olympic Committee
the following year.
Progression in pharmacology
has always outstripped the ability of sports federations to implement rigorous testing procedures but since the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency
in 1999 more and more athletes are being caught.
The first tests for athletes were at the 1966 European Championships and two years later the IOC implemented their first drug tests at both the Summer
and Winter Olympics
. Anabolic steroid
s became prevalent during the 1970s and after a method of detection was found they were added to the IOC's prohibited substances list in 1976.
Over the years, different sporting bodies have evolved differently to the war against doping. Some, such as athletics and cycling, are becoming increasingly vigilant against doping in their sports. However, there has been criticism that sports such as soccer and baseball are doing nothing about the issue, and letting athletes implicated in doping away unpunished. An example of this was Operation Puerto—approximately 200 sportspersons were implicated in blood doping. Of these, approximately 50 were cyclists and 150 were other sportspersons, including several "high profile soccer and tennis players" . The cyclists were pursued over their involvement, with many of them getting bans, such as Ivan Basso and Tyler Hamilton. By contrast, not a single soccer player involved in the doping ring was named, and to this day, all remain unpunished.
A handful of commentators maintain that, as outright prevention of doping is an impossibility, all doping should be legalised. Most disagree with this assertion, pointing out the claimed harmful long-term effects of many doping agents. However, with no medical data to support these claimed health problems, it is, at best, questionable. Opponents claim that with doping legal, all competitive athletes would be compelled to use drugs, and the net effect would be a level playing field but with widespread health consequences. Considering that anti-doping is largely ineffective due to both testing limitations and lack of enforcement, this is not markedly different than the situation already in existence.
Another point of view is that doping could be legalized to some extent using a drug whitelist and medical counseling, such that medical safety
is ensured, with all usage published. Under such a system, it is likely that athletes would attempt cheat by exceeding official limits to try to gain an advantage; this could be considered conjecture as drug amounts do not always correlate linearly with performance gains. To police such a system could be as difficult as policing a total ban on performance enhancing drugs.
The main objective of the Convention is to promote the national and international harmonisation of the measures to be taken against doping. In their constitutional provisions, each contracting party undertakes to:
Furthermore the Convention describes the mission of the Monitoring Group set up in order to monitor its implementation and periodically re-examine the List of prohibited substances and methods which can be found in annex to the main text.
An Additional Protocol to the Convention entered into force on 1 April 2004 with the aim of ensuring the mutual recognition of anti-doping controls and of reinforcing the implementation of the Convention using a binding control system.
WADA
's Executive Committee and Foundation Board clarified at a meeting on 19–20 November, that an athlete whose A-sample has revealed the presence of a prohibited substance or method to request the analysis of his or her B-sample.
"The B-sample helps confirm that an anti-doping rule violation has occurred and protects the rights of the athletes", said WADA Director General David Howman. "It should be stressed that anti-doping is one of the few types of controls in society in which a confirmation procedure is used in order to protect individuals, and the very rare cases in which the analysis of the B-sample did not match the results of the A-sample have shown the usefulness of such procedure."
essay that legalizing performance-enhancing substances, as well as genetic and cyborg enhancements once they became available, would satisfy society's need for übermensch
en and reverse the decline in public interest in sports.
Despite the serious health problem brought by PEDs, some athletes point to the already dangerous environment in sports like football and martial arts and wonder if there is a double standard where health concerns brought by the aggressive nature of these sports is viewed acceptable but not PEDs.
(NFL) inability to suspend players found with banned susbstances; after it was ruled by a federal court
, that local labor laws superseded the NFL's anti-doping regime. The challenge was supported by the National Football League Players Association.
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
is commonly referred to by the term "doping", particularly by those organizations that regulate competitions. The use of performance enhancing drugs is mostly done to improve athletic performance. This is why many sports ban the use of performance enhancing drugs. Another similar use of medical technology is called blood doping
Blood doping
Blood doping is the practice of boosting the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream in order to enhance athletic performance. Because such blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the muscles, a higher concentration in the blood can improve an athlete’s aerobic capacity and...
, either by blood transfusion
Blood transfusion
Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...
or use of the hormone erythropoietin
Erythropoietin
Erythropoietin, or its alternatives erythropoetin or erthropoyetin or EPO, is a glycoprotein hormone that controls erythropoiesis, or red blood cell production...
(EPO). The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical by most international sports organizations and especially the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
, although ethicists have argued that it is little different from the use of new materials in the construction of suits and sporting equipment, which similarly aid performance and can give competitors an unfair advantage over others. The reasons for the ban are mainly the alleged health threat of performance-enhancing drugs, the equality of opportunity for athletes, and the exemplary effect of "clean" ("doping-free") sports for the public.
This entry concerns the use of performance-enhancing drugs by humans.
The use of such drugs is also common in horse racing and other equestrian sports, and in greyhound racing
Greyhound racing
Greyhound racing is the sport of racing greyhounds. The dogs chase a lure on a track until they arrive at the finish line. The one that arrives first is the winner....
.
Origin of the term "doping"
There are many suggestions as to the origin of the word "doping". One is that it is derived from "dop", an alcoholic drink used as a stimulant in ceremonial dances in 18th century Southern Africa. Another suggestion is that the word comes from the Dutch word "doop" (a thick dipping sauce) that entered American slang to describe how robbers stupefied victims by mixing tobacco with the seeds of Datura stramoniumDatura stramonium
Datura stramonium, known by the common names Jimson weed, devil's trumpet, devil's weed, thorn apple, tolguacha, Jamestown weed, stinkweed, locoweed, datura, pricklyburr, devil's cucumber, Hell's Bells, moonflower and, in South Africa, malpitte and mad seeds, is a common weed in the...
, known as jimsonweed, which contains a number of tropane alkaloids, causing sedation, hallucinations and confusion. By 1889, "dope" was used in connection with the preparation of a thick viscous preparation of opium for smoking, and during the 1890s this extended to any stupefying narcotic drug. In 1900, dope was also defined as "a preparation of drugs designed to influence a racehorse's performance".
History
Texts going back to antiquity suggest that men have always tried to work harder or at least suffer less as they were doing so. When the fittest of a nation were selected as athletes or combatants, they were fed diets and given treatments considered beneficial. For instance, Scandinavian mythology says Berserkers could drink a mixture called "butotens", perhaps prepared from the Amanita muscariaAmanita muscaria
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita , is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita...
mushroom, to increase their physical power a dozen times at the risk of insanity. In more recent times, the German missionary and doctor Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...
wrote of Gabon
Gabon
Gabon , officially the Gabonese Republic is a state in west central Africa sharing borders with Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, and with the Republic of the Congo curving around the east and south. The Gulf of Guinea, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean is to the west...
in the early 19th century: "The people of the country can, having eaten certain leaves or roots, toil [pagayer] vigorously all day without feeling hungry, thirsty or tired and all the time showing a happiness and gaiety."
A participant in an endurance walking race
Pedestrianism
Pedestrianism was a 19th-century form of competitive walking, often professional and funded by wagering, from which the modern sport of racewalking developed.-18th- and early 19th-century Britain:...
in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Abraham Wood, said in 1807 that he had used laudanum, or opium, to keep him awake for 24 hours while competing against Robert Barclay Allardyce. By April 1877, walking races had stretched to 500 miles and the following year, also at the Agricultural Hall in Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
, London, to 520 miles. The Illustrated London News chided:
- It may be an advantage to know that a man can travel 520 miles in 138 hours, and manage to live through a week with an infinitesimal amount of rest, though we fail to perceive that anyone could possibly be placed in a position where his ability in this respect would be of any use to him [and] what is to be gained by a constant repetition of the fact.
The event proved popular, however, with 20,000 spectators attending each day. Encouraged by this, promoters developed the idea and soon held similar races for cyclists.
- "...and much more likely to endure their miseries publicly; a tired walker, after all, merely sits down - a tired cyclist falls off and possibly brings others crashing down as well. That's much more fun".
The fascination with six-day bicycle races spread across the Atlantic and the same appeal to base instincts brought in the crowds in America as well. And the more spectators paid at the gate, the higher the prizes could be and the greater was the incentive of riders to stay awake—or be kept awake—to ride the greatest distance. Their exhaustion was countered by soigneurs (the French word for "carers"), helpers akin to seconds in boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
. Among the treatments they supplied was nitroglycerine, a drug used to stimulate the heart after cardiac attacks and which was credited with improving riders' breathing. Riders suffered hallucinations from the exhaustion and perhaps the drugs. The American champion Major Taylor refused to continue the New York race, saying: "I cannot go on with safety, for there is a man chasing me around the ring with a knife in his hand."
Public reaction turned against such trials, whether individual races or in teams of two. One report chided:
- An athletic contest in which the participants 'go queer' in their heads, and strain their powers until their faces become hideous with the tortures that rack them, is not sport, it is brutality. It appears from the reports of this singular performance that some of the bicycle riders have actually become temporarily insane during the contest... Days and weeks of recuperation will be needed to put the racers in condition, and it is likely that some of them will never recover from the strain.
The American specialist in doping, Max M. Novich, wrote: "Trainers of the old school who supplied treatments which had cocaine as their base declared with assurance that a rider tired by a six-day race would get his second breath after absorbing these mixtures." John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, said six-day races were "de facto experiments investigating the physiology of stress as well as the substances that might alleviate exhaustion."
Strychnine at the Olympics
These "de facto experiments investigating the physiology of stress as well as the substances that might alleviate exhaustion" were not unknown outside cycling.Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
marathon in 1904. He crossed the line behind a fellow American, Fred Lorz, whose concept of marathon-running extended to riding half the way in a car thereby disqualifying him. However, Hicks was also aided by outside help. His trainer, Charles Lucas, pulled out a hypodermic and came to his aid as his runner began to struggle.
- I therefore decided to inject him with a milligram of sulphate of strychnineStrychnineStrychnine is a highly toxic , colorless crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion...
and to make him drink a large glass brimming with brandy. He set off again as best he could [but] he needed another injection four miles from the end to give him a semblance of speed and to get him to the finish.
The use of strychnine, far from being banned, was thought necessary to survive demanding races, says the sports historian Alain Lunzenfichter. The historian of sports doping, Dr Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, said:
- It has to be appreciated that at the time the menace of doping for the health of athletes or of the purity of competition had yet to enter the morals because, after this marathon, the official race report said: The marathon has shown from a medical point of view how drugs can be very useful to athletes in long-distance races.
Hicks was, in the phrase of the time, "between life and death" but recovered, collected his gold medal a few days later, and lived for almost 60 more years, although he never again took part in athletics.
The Convicts of the Road
In 1924 the journalist Albert LondresAlbert Londres
Albert Londres was a French journalist and writer. One of the inventors of investigative journalism, he criticized abuses of colonialism such as forced labour. Albert Londres gave his name to a journalism prize for Francophone journalists.- Biography :Londres was born in Vichy in 1884...
followed the Tour de France for the French newspaper, Le Petit Parisien
Le Petit Parisien
Le Petit Parisien was a prominent French newspaper during the French Third Republic. It was published between 1876 and 1944, and its circulation was over 2 million after the First World War.-Publishing:...
. At Coutances
Coutances
Coutances is a commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France.-History:Capital of the Unelli, a Gaulish tribe, the town took the name of Constantia in 298 during the reign of Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus...
he heard that the previous year's winner, Henri Pélissier
Henri Pélissier
Henri Pélissier was a French racing cyclist from Paris and champion of the 1923 Tour de France. In addition to his 29 career victories, he was known for his long-standing feud with Tour founder Henri Desgrange and for protesting against the conditions endured by riders in the early years of the Tour...
, his brother Francis
Francis Pélissier
Francis Pélissier was a French professional road racing cyclist from Paris. He was the younger brother of Tour de France winner Henri Pélissier, and the older brother of Tour de France stage winner Charles Pélissier. He won several classic cycle races like Paris–Tours, Bordeaux–Paris and Grand...
and a third rider, Maurice Ville, had resigned from the competition after an argument with the organiser, Henri Desgrange
Henri Desgrange
Henri Desgrange was a French bicycle racer and sports journalist. He set 12 world track cycling records, including the hour record of 35.325 kilometres on 11 May 1893. He was the first organiser of the Tour de France.-Origins:Henri Desgrange was one of two brothers, twins...
. Henri explained the problem—whether or not he had the right to take off a jersey—and went on to talk of drugs, reported in Londres' race diary, in which he invented the phrase Les Forçats de la Route (The Convicts of the Road):
- "You have no idea what the Tour de France is," Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15. We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going? Here..." He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, for our eyes. This is chloroform, for our gums."
- "This," Ville said, emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees."
- "And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, here are the pills." Each pulled out three boxes.
- "The truth is," Francis said, "that we keep going on dynamite."
Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off, then of their bodies being drained by diarrhea
Diarrhea
Diarrhea , also spelled diarrhoea, is the condition of having three or more loose or liquid bowel movements per day. It is a common cause of death in developing countries and the second most common cause of infant deaths worldwide. The loss of fluids through diarrhea can cause dehydration and...
, before continuing:
- "At night, in our rooms, we can't sleep. We twitch and dance and jig about as though we were doing St Vitus's DanceSydenham's choreaSydenham's chorea or chorea minor is a disease characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements affecting primarily the face, feet and hands. Sydenham's chorea results from childhood infection with Group A beta-hemolytic Streptococci and is reported to occur in 20-30% of patients with...
..."
- "There's less flesh on our bodies than on a skeleton," Francis said.
Francis Pélissier said much later: "Londres was a famous reporter but he didn't know about cycling. We kidded him a bit with our cocaine and our pills. Even so, the Tour de France in 1924 was no picnic.
The acceptance of drug-taking in the Tour de France was so complete by 1930, when the race changed to national teams that were to be paid for by the organisers, that the rule book distributed to riders by the organiser, Henri Desgrange
Henri Desgrange
Henri Desgrange was a French bicycle racer and sports journalist. He set 12 world track cycling records, including the hour record of 35.325 kilometres on 11 May 1893. He was the first organiser of the Tour de France.-Origins:Henri Desgrange was one of two brothers, twins...
, reminded them that drugs were not among items with which they would be provided.
The use of Pot Belge
Pot Belge
Pot Belge is a French term that is used to describe a mixture of drugs illegally used by cyclists. It can be translated as "Belgian mix"The term is commonly used to describe a mixture of drugs, variously constituted from cocaine, heroin, caffeine, amphetamines, and other analgesics. N.B...
by road cyclists in continental Europe exemplifies a cross-over between recreational and performance-enhancing abuse of drugs by sportsman.
Benzedrine
BenzedrineBenzedrine
Benzedrine is the trade name of the racemic mixture of amphetamine . It was marketed under this brandname in the USA by Smith, Kline & French in the form of inhalers, starting in 1928...
is a trade name for amphetamine. The Council of Europe says it first appeared in sport at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It was produced in 1887 and the derivative, Benzedrine, was isolated in the U.S. in 1934. Its perceived effects gave it the street name "speed". British troops used 72 million amphetamine tablets in the Second World War and the RAF got through so many that "Methedrine won the Battle of Britain" according to one report. The problem was that amphetamine leads to a lack of judgement and a willingness to take risks, which in sport could lead to better performances but in fighters and bombers led to more crash landings than the RAF could tolerate. The drug was withdrawn but large stocks remained on the black market. Amphetamine was also used legally as an aid to slimming.
Everton
Everton F.C.
Everton Football Club are an English professional association football club from the city of Liverpool. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football...
have long been one of the top clubs in the English association football league. The club were champions of the 1962–63 season. And it was done, according to a national newspaper investigation, with the help of Benzedrine. Word spread after Everton's win that the drug had been involved. The newspaper investigated, cited where the reporter believed it had come from, and quoted the goalkeeper, Albert Dunlop, as saying:
- I cannot remember how they first came to be offered to us. But they were distributed in the dressing rooms. We didn't have to take them but most of the players did. The tablets were mostly white but once or twice they were yellow. They were used through the 1961–62 season and the championship season which followed it. Drug-taking had previously been virtually unnamed in the club. But once it had started we could have as many tablets as we liked. On match days they were handed out to most players as a matter of course. Soon some of the players could not do without the drugs. Now in Professional sports only 34% of the Athletes use Performance enhancing drugs.
The club agreed that drugs had been used but that they "could not possibly have had any harmful effect." Dunlop, however, said he had become an addict.
Benzedrine and its sister drugs were irresistible in other sports. In November 1942, the Italian cyclist Fausto Coppi
Fausto Coppi
Angelo Fausto Coppi, , was the dominant international cyclist of the years each side of the Second World War. His successes earned him the title Il Campionissimo, or champion of champions...
took "seven packets of amphetamine" to beat the world hour record on the track. In 1960, the Danish rider Knud Enemark Jensen collapsed during the 100 km team time trial at the Olympic Games in Rome and died later in hospital. The autopsy showed he had taken amphetamine and another drug, Ronicol
Nicotinyl alcohol
Nicotinyl alcohol is a niacin derivative used as a hypolipidemic agent and as a vasodilator....
, which dilates the blood vessels. The chairman of the Dutch cycling federation, Piet van Dijk, said of Rome that "dope - whole cartloads -[were] used in such royal quantities."
The British professional Jock Andrews used to joke: "You need never go off-course chasing the peloton in a big race - just follow the trail of empty syringes and dope wrappers."
The Dutch cycling team manager Kees Pellenaars told of a rider in his care:
- I took him along to a training camp in Spain. The boy changed then into a sort of lion. He raced around as though he was powered by rockets. I went to talk to him. He was really happy he was riding well and he told me to look out for him. I asked if he wasn't perhaps "using something" and he jumped straight up, climbed on a chair and from deep inside a cupboard he pulled out a plastic bag full of pills. I felt my heart skip a beat. I had never seen so many fireworks together. With a soigneur we counted the pills: there were 5,000 of them, excluding hormone preparations and sleeping pills. I took them away, to his own relief. I let him keep the hormones and the sleeping pills.
- Later he seemed to have taken too many at once and he slept for a couple of days on end. We couldn't wake him up. We took him to hospital and they pumped out his stomach. They tied him to his bed to prevent anything going wrong again. But one way or another he had some stimulant and fancied taking a walk. A nurse came across him in the corridor, walking along with the bed strapped to his back.
Anabolic steroids
Anabolic steroids (AAS) were first isolated, identified and synthesizedChemical synthesis
In chemistry, chemical synthesis is purposeful execution of chemical reactions to get a product, or several products. This happens by physical and chemical manipulations usually involving one or more reactions...
in the 1930s, and are now used therapeutically in medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
to stimulate bone
Bone
Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...
growth and appetite
Appetite
The appetite is the desire to eat food, felt as hunger. Appetite exists in all higher life-forms, and serves to regulate adequate energy intake to maintain metabolic needs. It is regulated by a close interplay between the digestive tract, adipose tissue and the brain. Decreased desire to eat is...
, induce male puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
, and treat chronic wasting
Wasting
In medicine, wasting refers to the process by which a debilitating disease causes muscle and fat tissue to "waste" away. Wasting is sometimes referred to as "acute malnutrition" because it is believed that episodes of wasting have a short duration, in contrast to stunting, which is regarded as...
conditions, such as cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
and AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
. Anabolic steroids also produce increases in muscle mass and physical strength, and are consequently used in sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
and bodybuilding
Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding is a form of body modification involving intensive muscle hypertrophy. An individual who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. In competitive and professional bodybuilding, bodybuilders display their physiques to a panel of judges, who assign points based on their...
to enhance strength or physique. Known side effects include harmful changes in cholesterol
Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a complex isoprenoid. Specifically, it is a waxy steroid of fat that is produced in the liver or intestines. It is used to produce hormones and cell membranes and is transported in the blood plasma of all mammals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes...
levels (increased Low density lipoprotein
Low density lipoprotein
Low-density lipoprotein is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins, which in order of size, largest to smallest, are chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL, and HDL, that enable transport of cholesterol within the water-based bloodstream...
and decreased High density lipoprotein
High density lipoprotein
High-density lipoprotein is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins, which, in order of sizes, largest to smallest, are chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL, and HDL, which enable lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides to be transported within the water-based bloodstream...
), acne
Acne vulgaris
Acne vulgaris is a common human skin disease, characterized by areas of skin with seborrhea , comedones , papules , pustules , Nodules and possibly scarring...
, high blood pressure, liver damage
Hepatotoxicity
Hepatotoxicity implies chemical-driven liver damage.The liver plays a central role in transforming and clearing chemicals and is susceptible to the toxicity from these agents. Certain medicinal agents, when taken in overdoses and sometimes even when introduced within therapeutic ranges, may injure...
. Some of these effects can be mitigated by taking supplemental drugs.
AAS user in sports began in October 1954, John Ziegler
John Bosley Ziegler
John Bosley Ziegler, John Ziegler, Montana Jack, was an American physician who originally developed the anabolic steroid Methandrostenolone which was released in the USA in 1958 by Ciba. He pioneered its athletic use as an aid to muscle growth by bodybuilders, administering it to U.S...
, a doctor who treated American athletes, went to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
with the American weightlifting team. There he met a Russian physicist who, over "a few drinks", repeatedly asked "What are you giving your boys?" When Ziegler returned the question, the Russian said that his own athletes were being given testosterone.
Returning to America, Ziegler tried weak doses of testosterone on himself, on the American trainer Bob Hoffman and on two lifters, Jim Park and Yaz Kuzahara. All gained more weight and strength than any training programme would produce but there were side-effects. Ziegler sought a drug without after-effects and hit on an anabolic steroid, methandrostenolone
Methandrostenolone
Methandrostenolone is an orally-effective anabolic steroid originally developed by John Ziegler and released in the US in the early 1960s by Ciba. It was used as an aid to muscle growth by bodybuilders until its ban by Congress under the Controlled Substances Act...
, (Dianabol, DBOL), made in the US in 1958 by Ciba
Ciba Specialty Chemicals
Ciba was a chemical company based in and near Basel, Switzerland. "Ciba" stood for "Chemische Industrie Basel" . It was formed as the non-pharmaceuticals elements of Novartis were spun out in 1997, following the merger in the previous year of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz that created Novartis.In 2008,...
.
The results were impressive—so impressive that lifters began taking ever more. Steroids spread to other sports where bulk mattered. Paul Lowe, a former running back with the San Diego Chargers American football team, told a California legislative committee on drug abuse in 1970: "We had to take them [steroids] at lunchtime. He [an official] would put them on a little saucer and prescribed them for us to take them and if not he would suggest there might be a fine."
Olympic statistics show the weight of shot putters grew 14 per cent between 1956 and 1972, whereas steeplechasers grew 7.6 per cent. The gold medallist pentathlete Mary Peters said: "A medical research team in the United States attempted to set up extensive research into the effects of steroids on weightlifters and throwers, only to discover that there were so few who weren't taking them that they couldn't establish any worthwhile comparisons."
In 1984, Jay Silvester
Jay Silvester
Jay Silvester was an American athlete who mainly competed in the discus throw. He competed for the United States in the men's discus throw at the 1972 Summer Olympics held in Munich, Germany, where he won the silver medal.Silvester was one of the U.S.'s most consistent discus throwers through the...
, a former four-time Olympian and 1972 silver medalist in the discus who was then with the physical education department of Brigham Young University in the U.S., questioned competitors at that year's Olympics. The range of steroid use he found ranged from 10 mg a day to 100 mg.
| Question | Yes | No | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Were you influenced by a professional athlete to take Performance enhancing drugs? | 61% | 39% | 0% |
| Have you ever taken anabolic steroids? | 68 | 32 | 0 |
| Ethically, do you approve of anabolic steroids in athletics? | 48 | 25 | 27 |
| If a test could positively identify steroid users, would you favour banishment of the drug in sport? | 48 | 35 | 17 |
| Are you aware of any specific reason why athletes who have not attained full maturity should avoid anabolic steroid usage? | 42 | 48 | 10 |
| If you were a coach, would you commend anabolic steroid usage to (mature) athletes in your event? | 45 | 35 | 20 |
| Do you feel anabolic steroids have positively affected the performance of athletes in your event? | 65 | 16 | 19 |
| Do you feel that steroids have negatively affected the performance of athletes in your event? | 6 | 61 | 33 |
| Do you feel that steroids enable a person to gain strength faster than otherwise possible? | 84 | 3 | 13 |
| Do you believe that steroids enable a person to gain cardio-respiratory endurance more quickly than otherwise possible? | 13 | 42 | 45 |
| Do you believe that steroids enable a person to gain greater cardio-respiratory endurance than otherwise possible? | 6 | 45 | 49 |
| Have you ever gained localised muscular endurance faster when taking anabolic steroids? | 48 | 42 | 10 |
| Have you gained greater local muscular endurance faster when taking anabolic steroids? | 32 | 22 | 46 |
| Do steroids enhance mental attitude? Do you feel more in control of your life? Do you feel you will perform better in your event? | 68 | 10 | 22 |
| Has steroid usage appeared to contribute to injury problems? | 26 | 32 | 42 |
| Do Athletes who use Performance enhancing drugs lose popularity? | 74 | 19 | 7 |
| Do steroids increase body weight? | 55 | 16 | 29 |
| Are steroids difficult to obtain? | 22 | 61 | 17 |
Several successful athletes and professional bodybuilders have admitted long-term methandrostenolone use before the drug was banned, including Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
and Sergio Oliva
Sergio Oliva
Sergio Oliva is a bodybuilder known as "The Myth". This sobriquet was given to him by bodybuilder/writer Rick Wayne. Wayne had begun calling Oliva "The Myth" ""....
. Dianabol is no longer produced but similar drugs are made elsewhere.
The use of anabolic steroids is now banned by all major sporting bodies, including the ATP
Association of Tennis Professionals
The Association of Tennis Professionals or ATP was formed in 1972 by Donald Dell, Jack Kramer, and Cliff Drysdale to protect the interests of male professional tennis players. Since 1990, the association has organized the worldwide tennis tour for men and linked the title of the tour with the...
, WTA
Women's Tennis Association
The Women's Tennis Association , founded in 1973 by Billie Jean King, is the principal organizing body of Women's Professional Tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women. Its counterpart organization in the men's professional game is the Association of...
, ITF
International Tennis Federation
The International Tennis Federation is the governing body of world tennis, made up of 205 national tennis associations.It was established as the International Lawn Tennis Federation by 12 national associations meeting at a conference in Paris, France on 1 March 1913...
, International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
, FIFA
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...
, UEFA
UEFA
The Union of European Football Associations , almost always referred to by its acronym UEFA is the administrative and controlling body for European association football, futsal and beach soccer....
, all major professional golf tours
Professional golf tours
Professional golf tours are the means by which otherwise unconnected professional golf tournaments are organised into a regular schedule. There are separate tours for men and women, with each tour being based in a specific geographical region, although some of their tournaments may be held in other...
, the National Hockey League
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...
, Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
, the National Basketball Association
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
, the European Athletic Association
European Athletic Association
The European Athletic Association is the European governing body for the sport of athletics.- History :In 1932, during a meeting of the International Amateur Athletic Federation in Los Angeles, a special committee was designated by the Council with the task of reviewing the conditions for the...
, WWE
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
, the NFL
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
and the UCI
Union Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland....
. However drug testing can be wildly inconsistent and, in some instances, has gone unenforced.
1988 Seoul Olympics
A famous case of illicit AAS use in a competition was Canadian Ben JohnsonBen Johnson (athlete)
Benjamin Sinclair "Ben" Johnson, CM , is a former sprinter from Canada, who enjoyed a high-profile career during most of the 1980s, winning two Olympic bronze medals and an Olympic gold, which was subsequently rescinded...
's victory in the 100 m at the 1988 Summer Olympics
1988 Summer Olympics
The 1988 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad, were an all international multi-sport events celebrated from September 17 to October 2, 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. They were the second summer Olympic Games to be held in Asia and the first since the 1964 Summer Olympics...
. He subsequently failed the drug test when stanozolol
Stanozolol
Stanozolol, commonly sold under the name Winstrol , Tenabol and Winstrol Depot , was developed by Winthrop Laboratories in 1962...
was found in his urine. He later admitted to using the steroid as well as Dianabol, Testosterone Cypionate, Furazabol
Furazabol
Furazabol is a derivative of the anabolic steroid stanozolol. It differs from stanozolol by having a furazan ring system in place of the pyrazole...
, and human growth hormone amongst other things. Johnson was therefore stripped of his gold medal as well as recognition of what had been a world-record performance. Carl Lewis
Carl Lewis
Frederick Carlton "Carl" Lewis is an American former track and field athlete, who won 10 Olympic medals including 9 gold, and 10 World Championships medals, of which 8 were gold. His career spanned from 1979 when he first achieved a world ranking to 1996 when he last won an Olympic title and...
was then promoted one place to take the Olympic gold title. Lewis had also run under the current world record time and was therefore recognized as the new record holder, however, in 2003, Dr. Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...
(USOC) director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, gave copies of documents to Sports Illustrated which revealed that some 100 American athletes who failed drug tests and should have been prevented from competing in the Olympics were nevertheless cleared to compete. Among those athletes was Carl Lewis
Carl Lewis
Frederick Carlton "Carl" Lewis is an American former track and field athlete, who won 10 Olympic medals including 9 gold, and 10 World Championships medals, of which 8 were gold. His career spanned from 1979 when he first achieved a world ranking to 1996 when he last won an Olympic title and...
. Lewis then broke his silence on allegations that he was the beneficiary of a drugs cover-up, admitting he had tested positive for banned substances but claiming he was just one of "hundreds" of American athletes who were allowed to escape bans, concealed by the USOC. Lewis has now acknowledged that he failed three tests during the 1988 US Olympic trials, which under international rules at the time should have prevented him from competing in the Seoul games two months later.
Former athletes and officials came out against the USOC cover-up. "For so many years I lived it. I knew this was going on, but there's absolutely nothing you can do as an athlete. You have to believe governing bodies are doing what they are supposed to do. And it is obvious they did not", said former American sprinter and 1984 Olympic champion, Evelyn Ashford
Evelyn Ashford
Evelyn Ashford is a retired American athlete, the 1984 Olympic champion in the 100 m. She has run under the 11 second barrier over 30 times and was the first to run under 11 seconds in an Olympic Games.As a 19-year-old, Ashford finished 5th in the 100 m event at the 1976 Summer Olympics...
.
The case of East Germany
In 1977, one of East Germany's best sprinters, Renate Neufeld, fled to the West with the Bulgarian she later married. A year later she said that she had been told to take drugs supplied by coaches while training to represent East Germany in the 1980 Olympic Games.- At 17, I joined the East Berlin Sports Institute. My speciality was the 80m hurdles. We swore that we would never speak to anyone about our training methods, including our parents. The training was very hard. We were all watched. We signed a register each time we left for dormitory and we had to say where we were going and what time we would return. One day, my trainer, Günter Clam, advised me to take pills to improve my performance: I was running 200m in 24 seconds. My trainer told me the pills were vitamins, but I soon had cramp in my legs, my voice became gruff and sometimes I couldn't talk any more. Then I started to grow a moustache and my periods stopped. I then refused to take these pills. One morning in October 1977, the secret police took me at 7am and questioned me about my refusal to take pills prescribed by the trainer. I then decided to flee, with my fiancé.
She brought with her to the West grey tablets and green powder she said had been given to her, to members of her club, and to other athletes. The West German doping analyst Manfred Donike reportedly identified them as anabolic steroids. She said she stayed quiet for a year for the sake of her family. But when her father then lost his job and her sister was expelled from her handball club, she decided to tell her story.
East Germany closed itself to the sporting world in May 1965. In 1977 the shot-putter
Shot put
The shot put is a track and field event involving "putting" a heavy metal ball—the shot—as far as possible. It is common to use the term "shot put" to refer to both the shot itself and to the putting action....
Ilona Slupianek, who weighed 93 kg, tested positive for anabolic steroids at the European Cup meeting in Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
and thereafter athletes were tested before they left the country. At the same time, the Kreischa testing laboratory near Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
passed into government control, which was reputed to make around 12,000 tests a year on East German athletes but without any being penalised.
The International Amateur Athletics Federation
International Association of Athletics Federations
The International Association of Athletics Federations is the international governing body for the sport of athletics. It was founded in 1912 at its first congress in Stockholm, Sweden by representatives from 17 national athletics federations as the International Amateur Athletics Federation...
suspended Slupianek for 12 months, a penalty that ended two days before the European championships in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. In the reverse of what the IAAF hoped, sending her home to East Germany meant she was free to train unchecked with anabolic steroids, if she wanted to, and then compete for another gold medal. Which indeed she won.
After that, almost nothing emerged from the East German sports schools and laboratories. A rare exception was the visit by the sports writer and former athlete, Doug Gilbert of the Edmonton Sun, who said:
- Dr (Heinz) Wuschech knows more about anabolic steroids than any doctor I have ever met, and yet he cannot discuss them openly any more than Geoff Capes or Mac Wilkins can openly discuss them in the current climate of amateur sports regulation. What I did learn in East Germany was that they feel there is little danger from anabolica, as they call it, when the athletes are kept on strictly monitored programmes. Although the extremely dangerous side-effects are admitted, they are statistically no more likely to occur than side-effects from the birth control pill. If, that is, programmes are constantly medically monitored as to dosage.
Other reports came from the occasional athlete who fled to the West. There were 15 between 1976 and 1979. One, the ski-jumper Hans Georg Aschenbach, said: "Long-distance skiers start having injections to their knees from the age 14 because of their intensive training." He said: "For every Olympic champion, there at least 350 invalids. There are gymnasts among the girls who have to wear corsets from the age of 18 because their spine and their ligaments have become so worn... There are young people so worn out by the intensive training that they come out of it mentally blank [lessivés - washed out], which is even more painful than a deformed spine."
After German reunification, on 26 August 1993 the records were opened and the evidence was there that the Stasi
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
, the state secret police, supervised systematic doping of East German athletes from 1971 until reunification in 1990. Doping existed in other countries, says the expert Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, both communist and capitalist, but the difference with East Germany was that it was a state policy.
The Sportvereinigung Dynamo (English:Sport Club Dynamo) was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former East Germany. Many former club officials and some athletes found themselves charged after the dissolution of the country. A special page on the internet was created by doping victims trying to gain justice and compensation, listing people involved in doping in the GDR.
State-endorsed doping began with the Cold War when every eastern bloc gold was an ideological victory. From 1974, Manfred Ewald, the head of the GDR's sports federation, imposed blanket doping. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the country of 17 million collected nine gold medals. Four years later the total was 20 and in 1976 it doubled again to 40. Ewald was quoted as having told coaches, "They're still so young and don't have to know everything." He was given a 22-month suspended sentence, to the outrage of his victims.
Often, doping was carried out without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse, one of them is Rica Reinisch
Rica Reinisch
Rica Reinisch is a retired swimmer from East Germany. She is 5'9" tall and weighs 132 lbs., and is a specialist in backstroke, setting four world records in the Moscow Games , at the age of fifteen...
, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts.
Two former Dynamo Berlin
SC Dynamo Berlin
The Sports Club Dynamo Berlin was an East German sports club that existed from 1954 to 1991. It was a training center for the Sports Club Dynamo .-Sporting spectrum:...
club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 80, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East-Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances. Binus was sentenced in August, Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.
Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drugs test, though Stasi files show that many did, indeed, produce positive tests at Kreischa
Kreischa
Kreischa is a municipality in the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district, Saxony, Germany. It directly borders the Saxon capital Dresden and consists of 14 districts.Kreischa was first mentioned in 1282...
, the Saxon laboratory (German:Zentrales Dopingkontroll-Labor des Sportmedizinischen Dienstes) that was at the time approved by the International Olympic Committee, now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS).
In 2005, fifteen years after the end of the GDR, the manufacturer of the drugs in former East Germany, Jenapharm
Jenapharm
Jenapharm is a pharmaceutical company from Jena, Germany. Founded in 1950 in East Germany, the company focused from the beginning on the production and development of steroids...
, still finds itself involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes.
Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes who publicly admitted to doping, accusing their coaches:
- Daniela HungerDaniela HungerDaniela Hunger is a former medley and freestyle swimmer from East Germany, who won two golden medals at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea: in the women's 200 m individual medley, and as a member of the women's 4×100 m freestyle team...
- Andrea PollackAndrea PollackAndrea Pollack is a former butterfly swimmer from East Germany, who won two gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada at age fifteen. She won individual 200 m butterfly and with the women's relay team in the 4×100 m medley...
Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes disqualified for doping:
- Ilona SlupianekIlona SlupianekIlona Briesenick, née Schoknecht divorced Slupianek is a retired German athlete, who starred mainly in the shot put...
(Ilona Slupianek was tested positive along with three Finnish athletes at the 1977 European Cup, becoming the only East German athlete ever to be convicted of doping)
Based on the admission by Pollack, the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...
asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 Summer Olympics
1976 Summer Olympics
The 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and...
. Despite court rulings in Germany that substantiate claims of systematic doping by some East German swimmers, the IOC executive board announced that it has no intention of revising the Olympic record books. In rejecting the American petition on behalf of its women's medley relay team in Montreal and a similar petition from the British Olympic Association on behalf of Sharron Davies
Sharron Davies
Sharron Elizabeth Davies MBE is a retired swimmer from the United Kingdom. She won a silver medal in the 400 metre individual medley at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and two gold medals at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton...
, the IOC made it clear that it wanted to discourage any such appeals in the future.
Modern times
Currently, tetrahydrogestrinoneTetrahydrogestrinone
Tetrahydrogestrinone is an anabolic steroid developed by Patrick Arnold. It has affinity to the androgen receptor and the progesterone receptor, but not to the estrogen receptor...
(THG) and modafinil
Modafinil
Modafinil is an analeptic drug manufactured by Cephalon, and is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of narcolepsy, shift work sleep disorder, and excessive daytime sleepiness associated with obstructive sleep apnea...
are causing controversy throughout the sporting world, with many high profile cases attracting major press coverage as prominent United States athletes have tested positive for these doping substances. Some athletes who were found to have used modafinil protested as the drug was not on the prohibited list at the time of their offence; however, the World Anti-Doping Agency
World Anti-Doping Agency
The World Anti-Doping Agency , , is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee . It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as a result of what was called the "Declaration of Lausanne", to promote, coordinate and...
(WADA) maintains it is a substance related to those already banned, so the decisions stand. Modafinil
Modafinil
Modafinil is an analeptic drug manufactured by Cephalon, and is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of narcolepsy, shift work sleep disorder, and excessive daytime sleepiness associated with obstructive sleep apnea...
was added to the list of prohibited substances on 3 August 2004, ten days before the start of the 2004 Summer Olympics
2004 Summer Olympics
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece from August 13 to August 29, 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team...
.
NFL
In 2009, nearly 1 in 10 retired NFL players polled in a confidential survey said they had used now-banned anabolic steroids while still playing. 16.3 percent of offensive linemen admitted using steroids, as did 14.8 percent of defensive linemen.Shawne Merriman, NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year 2005, tested positive for steroids and was banned for four games, following two other NFL players—the Falcons' Matt Lehr and the Lions' Shaun Rogers—were suspended for violating the policy
Use of Performance-enhancing drugs in Association Football
Unlike individual sports such as bicycling, weight-lifting, and track and field, Football (soccer) is not widely associated with performance enhancing drugs. Like most high-profile team sports, football suffers more from an association with recreational drugs, the case of Diego MaradonaDiego Maradona
Diego Armando Maradona is a retired Argentine football player and widely regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time. Over the course of his professional club career Maradona played for Argentinos Juniors, Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Napoli, Sevilla and Newell's Old Boys, setting...
and cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
in 1991 being the best known of those.
Football has however been criticised for not sanctioning players implicated in performance enhancing drug scandals. Most recently, Operation Puerto implicated approximately 50 cyclists and 150 sportspersons of other sporting codes, including several "high profile football players". While the cyclists were named and pursued by the governing bodies of cycling, none of the football players were named or punished for their involvement in the doping ring.
Endurance sports
In 1998 the entire FestinaFestina
thumb|right|Festina watchesFestina is a watch company. It was founded in 1902 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.The manufacture's motto was Festina Lente . In 1984, Spanish industrialist Miguel Rodriguez, already owner of Lotus watches bought Festina and created the group Festina Lotus S.A....
team were excluded from the Tour de France
Tour de France
The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The...
following the discovery of a team car containing large amounts of various performance-enhancing drugs. The team director later admitted that some of the cyclists were routinely given banned substances. Six other teams pulled out in protest including Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
team TVM
TVM (cycling team)
TVM was a Dutch road bicycle racing team. It folded in 2000, two years after suffering a doping scandal. Farm Frites continued as a sponsor in 2001 with the new team, .-Names:-Riders:...
who left the tour still being questioned by the police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
. The Festina scandal overshadowed cyclist Marco Pantani
Marco Pantani
Marco Pantani was an Italian road racing cyclist, widely considered one of the best climbers in professional road bicycle racing...
's tour win, but he himself later failed a test. The infamous "pot belge
Pot Belge
Pot Belge is a French term that is used to describe a mixture of drugs illegally used by cyclists. It can be translated as "Belgian mix"The term is commonly used to describe a mixture of drugs, variously constituted from cocaine, heroin, caffeine, amphetamines, and other analgesics. N.B...
" or "Belgian mix" has a decades-long history in pro cycling, among both riders and support staff. More recently David Millar
David Millar
David Millar is a British road racing cyclist riding for . He has won three stages of the Tour de France, two of the Vuelta a España and one Stage of the Giro d'Italia. He was the British national road champion and the national time trial champion, both in 2007...
, the 2003 World-Time Trial Champion, admitted using EPO
Erythropoietin
Erythropoietin, or its alternatives erythropoetin or erthropoyetin or EPO, is a glycoprotein hormone that controls erythropoiesis, or red blood cell production...
, and was stripped of his title and suspended for two years. Still later, Roberto Heras
Roberto Heras
Roberto Heras Hernández is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer who won the Vuelta a España a record-tying three times. He broke the record with a fourth win in 2005, but was disqualified for taking EPO. In June 2011, Heras successfully appealed the disqualification in the civil court...
was stripped of his victory in the 2005 Vuelta a España
Vuelta a España
The Vuelta a España is a three-week road bicycle racing stage race that is one of the three "Grand Tours" of Europe and part of the UCI World Ranking calendar. The race lasts three weeks and attracts cyclists from around the world. The race is broken into day-long segments, called stages...
and suspended for two years after testing positive for EPO.
Sports lawyer Michelle Gallen has said that the pursuit of doping athletes has turned into a modern day witch-hunt
Witch-hunt
A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...
.
For extensive discussions of doping in the sport of competitive cycling, see:
- List of doping cases in cycling
- Doping at the Tour de FranceDoping at the Tour de FranceThere have been allegations of doping in the Tour de France since the race began in 1903. Early Tour riders consumed alcohol and used ether, among other substances, as a means of dulling the pain of competing in endurance cycling...
, with specific articles on the following doping cases in the Tour:- Festina affairFestina affairThe Festina Affair refers to the events that surrounded several doping scandals, doping investigations and confessions by riders to doping that occurred during and after the 1998 Tour de France. The affair began when a large haul of doping products was found in a car of the Festina cycling team...
(1998) - Floyd Landis doping caseFloyd Landis doping caseThe Floyd Landis doping case is a doping scandal that featured Floyd Landis, the initial winner of the 2006 Tour de France. After a meltdown in Stage 16, where he had lost ten minutes, Landis came back, superhumanly, if suspiciously in Stage 17 riding solo and passing his whole team...
(2006) - Doping at the 2007 Tour de FranceDoping at the 2007 Tour de FranceThe 2007 Tour de France was affected by a series of scandals and speculations related to doping. By the end of the Tour, two cyclists were dismissed for testing positive, the wearer of the yellow jersey was voluntarily retired by his team for lying about his whereabouts and missing doping tests...
- Festina affair
Reaction from sports organizations
Many sports organizations have banned the use of performance enhancing drugs and have very strict rules and consequences for people who are caught using them. The International Amateur Athletic Federation, now the International Association of Athletics FederationsInternational Association of Athletics Federations
The International Association of Athletics Federations is the international governing body for the sport of athletics. It was founded in 1912 at its first congress in Stockholm, Sweden by representatives from 17 national athletics federations as the International Amateur Athletics Federation...
, were the first international governing body of sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
to take the situation seriously. In 1928 they banned participants from doping, but with little in the way of testing available they had to rely on the word of the athlete that they were clean.
It was not until 1966 that FIFA
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...
(world football) and Union Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland....
(cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...
) joined the IAAF in the fight against drugs, closely followed by the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
the following year.
Progression in pharmacology
Pharmacology
Pharmacology is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function...
has always outstripped the ability of sports federations to implement rigorous testing procedures but since the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency
World Anti-Doping Agency
The World Anti-Doping Agency , , is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee . It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as a result of what was called the "Declaration of Lausanne", to promote, coordinate and...
in 1999 more and more athletes are being caught.
The first tests for athletes were at the 1966 European Championships and two years later the IOC implemented their first drug tests at both the Summer
1968 Summer Olympics
The 1968 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Mexico City, Mexico in October 1968. The 1968 Games were the first Olympic Games hosted by a developing country, and the first Games hosted by a Spanish-speaking country...
and Winter Olympics
1968 Winter Olympics
The 1968 Winter Olympics, officially known as the X Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1968 in Grenoble, France and opened on 6 February. Thirty-seven countries participated...
. Anabolic steroid
Anabolic steroid
Anabolic steroids, technically known as anabolic-androgen steroids or colloquially simply as "steroids", are drugs that mimic the effects of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone in the body. They increase protein synthesis within cells, which results in the buildup of cellular tissue ,...
s became prevalent during the 1970s and after a method of detection was found they were added to the IOC's prohibited substances list in 1976.
Over the years, different sporting bodies have evolved differently to the war against doping. Some, such as athletics and cycling, are becoming increasingly vigilant against doping in their sports. However, there has been criticism that sports such as soccer and baseball are doing nothing about the issue, and letting athletes implicated in doping away unpunished. An example of this was Operation Puerto—approximately 200 sportspersons were implicated in blood doping. Of these, approximately 50 were cyclists and 150 were other sportspersons, including several "high profile soccer and tennis players" . The cyclists were pursued over their involvement, with many of them getting bans, such as Ivan Basso and Tyler Hamilton. By contrast, not a single soccer player involved in the doping ring was named, and to this day, all remain unpunished.
A handful of commentators maintain that, as outright prevention of doping is an impossibility, all doping should be legalised. Most disagree with this assertion, pointing out the claimed harmful long-term effects of many doping agents. However, with no medical data to support these claimed health problems, it is, at best, questionable. Opponents claim that with doping legal, all competitive athletes would be compelled to use drugs, and the net effect would be a level playing field but with widespread health consequences. Considering that anti-doping is largely ineffective due to both testing limitations and lack of enforcement, this is not markedly different than the situation already in existence.
Another point of view is that doping could be legalized to some extent using a drug whitelist and medical counseling, such that medical safety
Safety
Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be...
is ensured, with all usage published. Under such a system, it is likely that athletes would attempt cheat by exceeding official limits to try to gain an advantage; this could be considered conjecture as drug amounts do not always correlate linearly with performance gains. To police such a system could be as difficult as policing a total ban on performance enhancing drugs.
Anti-Doping organizations and legislation
- In February 2011, the United States Olympic CommitteeUnited States Olympic CommitteeThe United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...
and the Ad CouncilAd CouncilThe Advertising Council, commonly known as the Ad Council, is an American non-profit organization that distributes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including non-profit organizations and agencies of the United States government....
launched an anti-steroid campaign called Play Asterisk Free aimed at teens. The campaign first launched in 2008 under the name "Don't Be An Asterisk".
Anti-Doping Convention of the Council of Europe
The Anti-Doping Convention of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg was opened for signature on 16 December 1989 as the first multilateral legal standard in this field. It has been signed by 48 states including the Council of Europe non-member states Australia, Belarus, Canada and Tunisia. The Convention is open for signature by other non-European states. It does not claim to create a universal model of anti-doping, but sets a certain number of common standards and regulations requiring Parties to adopt legislative, financial, technical, educational and other measures.The main objective of the Convention is to promote the national and international harmonisation of the measures to be taken against doping. In their constitutional provisions, each contracting party undertakes to:
- create a national co-ordinating body;
- reduce the trafficking of doping substances and the use of banned doping agents;
- reinforce doping controls and improve detection techniques;
- support education and awareness-raising programmes;
- guarantee the efficiency of sanctions taken against offenders;
- collaborate with sports organisations at all levels, including at international level;
- and to use accredited anti-doping laboratories.
Furthermore the Convention describes the mission of the Monitoring Group set up in order to monitor its implementation and periodically re-examine the List of prohibited substances and methods which can be found in annex to the main text.
An Additional Protocol to the Convention entered into force on 1 April 2004 with the aim of ensuring the mutual recognition of anti-doping controls and of reinforcing the implementation of the Convention using a binding control system.
Statistical validity
Professor Donald A. Berry has argued that the closed systems used by anti-doping agencies do not allow scientific (statistical) validation of the tests. This argument was seconded by an accompanying editorial in the magazine Nature (7 August 2008).Test methods
Under established doping control protocols, the participant will be asked to provide a urine sample, which will be divided into two, each portion to be preserved within sealed containers bearing the same unique identifying number and designation respectively as A- and B-samples.WADA
World Anti-Doping Agency
The World Anti-Doping Agency , , is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee . It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as a result of what was called the "Declaration of Lausanne", to promote, coordinate and...
's Executive Committee and Foundation Board clarified at a meeting on 19–20 November, that an athlete whose A-sample has revealed the presence of a prohibited substance or method to request the analysis of his or her B-sample.
"The B-sample helps confirm that an anti-doping rule violation has occurred and protects the rights of the athletes", said WADA Director General David Howman. "It should be stressed that anti-doping is one of the few types of controls in society in which a confirmation procedure is used in order to protect individuals, and the very rare cases in which the analysis of the B-sample did not match the results of the A-sample have shown the usefulness of such procedure."
Cheating the tests
Athletes seeking to avoid testing positive for doping use various methods to cheat on the drug tests. The most common methods include:- Urine replacement, which involves replacing dirty urine with clean urine from someone who is not taking banned substances. Urine replacement can be done by catheterization or with a prosthetic penis such as The Original WhizzinatorWhizzinatorThe Original Whizzinator is a product intended to fraudulently defeat drug tests. The Whizzinator comes as a kit complete with dried urine and syringe, heater packs , a false penis and instruction manual...
. - Diuretics, used to cleanse the system before having to provide a sample.
- Blood transfusions, which increase the blood's oxygen carrying capacity, in turn increasing endurance without the presence of drugs that could trigger a positive test result.
Defense
G. Pascal Zachary argues in a WiredWired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
essay that legalizing performance-enhancing substances, as well as genetic and cyborg enhancements once they became available, would satisfy society's need for übermensch
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
en and reverse the decline in public interest in sports.
Despite the serious health problem brought by PEDs, some athletes point to the already dangerous environment in sports like football and martial arts and wonder if there is a double standard where health concerns brought by the aggressive nature of these sports is viewed acceptable but not PEDs.
Legal
Anti-doping policies instituted by individual sporting governing bodies may conflict with local laws. Notable case includes the National Football LeagueNational Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
(NFL) inability to suspend players found with banned susbstances; after it was ruled by a federal court
United States District Court for the District of Minnesota
The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota is the Federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of Minnesota. Its two primary courthouses are in Minneapolis and Saint Paul...
, that local labor laws superseded the NFL's anti-doping regime. The challenge was supported by the National Football League Players Association.
Major League Baseball: The Mitchell Report
In December 2007 George Mitchell released his report on steroid usage in baseball. Major League Baseball asked Mitchell to conduct an independent investigation to see how bad steroid use was in baseball. In the report Mitchell covers many topics and he interviewed over 700 witnesses. He covers the effects of steroids on the human body. He also touches on Human Growth Hormone effects. He reports on baseball's drug testing policies before 2002 and the newer policies after 2002. Mitchell also named 86 players in the report that had some kind of connection to steroids. Among those named were: Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Eric Gagne. And to finish his report he made suggestions to the commissioner of baseball about drug testing and violations of the drug testing policies.Further reading
- Mottram, David (2005); Drugs in Sport, Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-37564-1.
- Murray, Thomas H. (2008); "Sports Enhancement", in From Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists, Policymakers, and Campaigns.
- Waddington and Smith (2008); An Introduction to Drugs in Sport, Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-43125-5.
- Sports Doping: From the Laboratory to the Playing Field. Radio and Internet feature by the Special English serviceSpecial EnglishSpecial English is a controlled version of the English language first used on October 19, 1959, and still presented daily by the United States broadcasting service Voice of America. World news and other programs are read one-third slower than regular VOA English. Reporters avoid idioms and use a...
of the Voice of AmericaVoice of AmericaVoice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
.
External links
- Anti-Doping Sciences Institute (ADSI)
- Banned Substances Control Group (BSCG)
- World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Homepage
- WALL-Protect: The anti-doping descriptive of food supplements
- List of Drugs Prohibited by the WADA for years 2005 and 2006 (PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
) - Testosterone / Epitestosterone Ratio: How is it significant?
- IAAF Anti-Doping Page.
- Olympic Movement Anti-doping Code (PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
) - Genetically Modified Athletes, by Dr Andy Miah.
- Resources on the ethics of enhancement from the Hastings Center, a nonpartisan bioethics research institution
- Bioethics & Sport blog.
- Doping Journal (ISSN 1812-948x), free scholar journal on doping science and anti-doping
- Doping in Cycling - an historical perspective
- Steroids in Sports
- In the Name of Fair Game... - a review from the Science Creative Quarterly
- CBC Digital Archives - Going for Dope: Canada and Drugs in Sport
- Poniewozik, James. This is Your Nation on Steroids. Time Magazine.
- CPLD.fr, Frankreichreise.info
- Out! Catching doping athletes from the 1 August 2007 issue of Analytical Chemistry