When the great French educationist and historian Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympics in 1896, the sports genius coined its moto as Citus, Altius, Fortius & Cominiter which means faster, higher, stronger & together. His vision was to unite the world through sporting excellence, embody the spirit of unity, sportsmanship and fair competition.
Coubertin never knew that one day his idealism in sports will be tarnished by athletes, coaches and sports organizations, who in search of a pot of gold will sacrifice the very spirit of Olympics by espousing the illicit means of performance enhancing drugs.
Use of drugs in sports is not a new phenomenon. Athletes, specially wrestlers and weightlifters, were reported to use cannabinoids and other banned substances for performance enhancement, recovery from injuries, work load recoveries and entertainment purposes.
The gladiators in the Roman Coliseum used stimulants to overcome fatigue and injury, and the ancient Greeks ate hallucinogenic mushrooms as well as sesame seeds for enhanced performances. For centuries the South American Indians chewed coca leaves to increase endurance.
In 1939 in a paper entitled “Doping” Boje stated, “There could be no doubt that stimulants are today widely used by athletes participating in competitions; the record breaking craze and the desire to satisfy an exacting public play a more and more prominent role, and take higher rank than the health of the competitors itself”.
The IOC medical code 1995 states that athletes employ a wide variety of drugs to enhance performance, including anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, insulin like growth factor, thyroid hormones, clenbuterol, L-dopa, ephedrine and amphetamines. Currently IOC has banned over 100 substances and 17 anabolic steroids.
The most unfortunate part of doping history in sports is not the involvement of sports minors, but the mighty amongst the sport world were and are in the lead of using banned substances. This includes USA, USSR, France, Australia, China, UK & Canada. Russia leads the table with 41 violations followed by Kenya which so far has 12 doping violations to its credit.
In 1980 the wealthy Catalan decedent Juan Antonio Samaranch became the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In the year 1981, the word “amateur” was removed from the Olympic charter. This was not an ordinary occurrence, because this marked the commercialising of the Olympic Games that converted the “Coubertin movement” into an advertising vehicle for multinational corporate sponsors and American television networks that became the foundations of his power in the world elitist club.
Professionalization in sports was a welcome sign on one hand, but on the other it impelled the athletes and their support staff to go overboard to achieve glory through all possible means. Over the past 30 years’ illicit drug use in Olympic sport and other major sports events has reached epidemic proportions.
Jan Todd and Terry Todd from the university of Texas at Austin in their research went through the IOC documents which remained closed to the public for 30 years. According to Todd & Terry the use of drugs in sports first came under discussion at the 57th session of IOC in San Francisco in 1960. The discussion was about the use of amphetamine sulfate or “pep pills” which was posing a potential danger to sports.
In 1960 Dr John Ziegler, a physician from Maryland, gave methandrostenelone, an anabolic steroid manufactured under the trade name Dianabol, to three US weightlifters: Tony Grace, Bill March & Lou Riecke. All three were good lifters, but not the best. All three became national champions and March and Recke both set the world records.
The flag was also raised by Weikko Russka of Berkeley, father of Sylvia Russka the Olympic swimmer that “pep pills” were found in the women’s dressing room at 1960 Olympic Trials for swimming & diving in Detroit. Bromantan which is now in the list of illegal substances also remained very popular amongst the athletes in the Russian block during the same era, because Russian pharmacologists regarded the drug as a stimulant with restorative effects after heavy exercise, and the same was used by Russian soldiers in harsh climate conditions.
After the death of British cyclist Tommy Simpson who died because of the use of amphetamine during tour de France in 1967 the Olympic medical committee decided to carry out random urine checks in 1968 Mexico Olympics. During these games Pakistan also won its second gold in Olympic field hockey.
In 1971 American weightlifter Ken Patera breaks the code of silence surrounding the use of anabolic steroids by athletes. He told the reporters that he was anxious to meet Russian superheavyweight Vassili Alexeev at 1972 Olympics. In their previous contest Alexeev barely won and Patera did not feel they were on equal footing. Last year, said Patera, “the only difference between me and him was that I couldn’t afford his pharmacy bill. Now I can.”
During the decades of 70s, eighties and nineties Prince de Merode the head of IOC Medical Commission made hectic efforts to control the menace of doping in sports, but the battle between good and evil in competitive sports grew with sophistication in development of banned substances.
Fast forward, it was during the 1994 Asian Games that the president of international swimming federation (FINA) Mustapha Larfaoui had criticised the Americans for not considering the Chinese swimmers in the world rankings. This all happened because eleven Chinese were tested positive in 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima. All but one out the eleven had taken DHT (dihydro testosterone). The swimmers received two-year ban while the weight lifters were banned for life.
In current scenario an athlete is considered guilty of using testosterone if the TEPIT ratio exceeds 6:1, although in actual practice many organisations are not pursuing the case as “positive” unless it is over 9. The modern day cheat athletes use testosterone skin patches for the application of controlled release of testosterone for a relatively even dosing over a longer period of time.
The illegal use of testosterone also known as T is more common among the female athletes because it’s more difficult to prove in female than in male athletes. The cases are further complicated by the use of designer drugs because these substances contain appropriate interfering or masking ion fragments.
In the recent history famous athletes like Maria Sharapova (Tennis Queen), Ben Johnson, Ashwin Akkunji (sprinter from India), Lance Armstrong, Tyson Gay, Shane Warne (Cricket, Australia), Anderson Silva (Brazilian mixed martial artist) and many other were caught cheating and using banned performance enhancement drugs to acquire the winning edge against their competitors.
WADA is responsible for the World Anti-Doping Code, adopted by more than 650 sports organizations, including international sports federations like FIBA, FIH & ICC, national anti-doping organizations, the IOC and the International Paralympic Committee.
The aim and objectives pf WADA was to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against drugs in sports. WADA classified the drug classes which were banned by IOC. This includes different types of stimulants like dexedrin, cocaine, ephedrine and methamphetamine, narcotics like methadone, morphine and codeine.
Athletes also used Zeranol a nonsteroidal but potent anabolic agent and Clenbuterol a B2 receptor commonly used in Europe to treat asthma to increase skeletal muscles and reduce body fat.
WADA also banned diuretics, peptide hormones like Human Growth Hormone; Somatotrophin and masking agents like Epitestosterone and Probenecid. Confirmation methods to detect drugs in urine and blood.
The IOC has a zero tolerance policy to combat cheating. The organization established a state of the art doping laboratory in Cologne to ensure that the testing is accurate, and the athlete rights are protected and the burden of proof is ensured through the Court of Arbitration for Sports. However, despite all technological advancement the coaches look for few indicators that helps in raising the timely alarm.
The history shows that improvement in performance of an athlete at an exceeding rate is usually drug fueled. Training at hidden exotic locations and sudden changes in physical appearances and voices of athletes are all signs of drugs usage.
In 2017 the IOC executive board created the International Testing Agency (ITA) which specializes in anti-doping programs and has asked all international Federations to follow the guidelines given by the ITA.
If competitive elite sports have to live and thrive according to the principles of great Pierre de Coubertin, then all international sports bodies must come on one page to combat the challenge of doping. The ban of two to four years on drugged athletes is not a sufficient punishment. All sports bodies should show their resolve by banning all those athletes and coaches for the life time, who try to steal the silver lining of hard working and honest compotators.
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