Doping in sport
For instance, Scandinavian mythology says Berserkers could drink a mixture called "butotens" to greatly improve their physical power at the risk of insanity, which is thought to have been prepared using the Amanita muscaria mushroom.
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.
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.
[31] Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason.
"[39][40] The CBC radio documentary, Rewind, "Ben Johnson: A Hero Disgraced" broadcast on 19 September 2013, for the 25th anniversary of the race, stated 20 athletes tested positive for drugs but were cleared by the IOC at this 1988 Seoul Olympics.
An IOC official stated that endocrine profiles done at those games indicated that 80 percent of the track and field athletes tested showed evidence of long-term steroid use, although not all were banned.
Stimulants are drugs that usually act on the central nervous system to modulate mental function and behavior, increasing an individual's sense of excitement, decreasing the sensation of fatigue and improving motor coordination.
"[46] The 1950s British cycling professional Jock Andrews would joke: "You need never go off-course chasing the peloton in a big race – just follow the trail of empty syringes and dope wrappers.
"[47] The Dutch cycling team manager Kees Pellenaars told of a rider in his care: Currently modafinil is being used throughout the sporting world, with many high-profile cases attracting press coverage as prominent United States athletes have failed tests for this substance.
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.
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 she won.
[71] 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.
West German heptathlete Birgit Dressel died at age 26 due to sudden multiple organ failure, triggered at least in part by long-term steroid abuse.
[90][91][92][93][94] According to British journalist Andrew Jennings, a KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the IOC to undermine doping tests and that Soviet athletes were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts".
"[95] A member of the IOC Medical Commission, Manfred Donike, privately ran additional tests with a new technique for identifying abnormal levels of testosterone by measuring its ratio to epitestosterone in urine.
[101] Due to widespread doping violations, including an attempt to sabotage ongoing investigations by the manipulation of computer data, on 9 December 2019 the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from all international sport for four years.
Following the race, the IOC stripped him of his gold medal[112] after his post-race urinalysis tested positive for traces of the banned substance ephedrine contained in his prescription asthma medication, Marax.
[121] Exum's documents revealed that Carl Lewis had tested positive three times at the 1988 Olympics trials for minimum amounts of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine, which were banned stimulants.
[118] Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason.
[125][126] There have been few incidents of doping in football, mainly due to FIFA's belief that education and prevention with constant in and out-of-competition controls play a key role in making high-profile competitions free of performance-enhancing drugs.
One of the reasons he spoke up were the serious medical conditions and/or deaths of some of his former members: Giuliano Taccola, then team's captain Armando Picchi (died aged 36 due to cancer), Marcello Giusti, Carlo Tagnin, Mauro Bicicli, Ferdinando Miniussi, Enea Masiero and Pino Longoni.
[142][143][144] In the 1970s performance-enhancing drugs were used on a regular basis according to witnesses of that period, mostly in Ajax, Feyenoord and AZ Alkmaar during competitive matches, including the 1970 and 1972 Intercontinental Cups won by the first two cited clubs.
[194] 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, it has become more effective to catch athletes who use drugs.
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.
A common rebuttal to this argument asserts that anti-doping efforts have been largely ineffective due to both testing limitations and lack of enforcement, and so sanctioned steroid use would not be markedly different from the situation already in existence.
Adolescent athletes are constantly influenced by what they see on the media, and some go to extreme measures to achieve the ideal image since society channels Judith Butler's definition of gender as a performative act.
In a study of 101 individuals, 86% responded that their use of performance enhancement drugs were influenced by the potential athletic success, 74% by the economic aspect, and 30% by self-confidence and social recognition related reasons.
[206] Under established doping control protocols, the athlete 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.
[Berry argues] ...that individual labs need to verify these detection limits in larger groups that include known dopers and non-dopers under blinded conditions that mimic what happens during competition.
"[225] G. Pascal Zachary argues in a Wired essay that legalizing performance-enhancing substances, as well as genetic enhancements once they became available, would satisfy society's need for übermenschen and reverse the decline in public interest in sports.
