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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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Seeking extra edge is as old as Olympics
Mercury News Historians and archaeologists so far have produced no evidence that famed long-distance runner Phidippides ever took undetectable steroids or any other performance-enhancing substances. Phidippides, according to legend, ran 26 miles from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens with news of a Greek victory over the Persians in 490 BC. Maybe the reason he eluded ancient drug testers is that he died of exhaustion. At the Athens Olympics, though, the sad reality is that any extraordinary feat will be accompanied by suspicions that the athlete was aided by banned drugs. The steroid scandal that blossomed from Burlingame's Balco Laboratories has cast a dark shadow all the way to Greece, sapping some joy from the Games. But cheating is nothing new at the Olympics. In fact, pharmacological boosts weren't even officially cheating until 1968. ``From the very beginning, coaches and athletes have been experimenting with substances,'' said historian David Wallechinsky, who publishes an Olympic encyclopedia before each Games. ``I always include a picture of 1904 marathon runner Thomas Hicks, who looks completely doped.'' That's because he was. Hicks' handlers plied him with doses of brandy and strychnine -- which 100 years ago constituted state-of-the-art performance-enhancers. It also worked -- he won the gold. Looking for an edge is as old as the Olympics themselves. Phidippides, of course, was not competing in those ancient Games. But Greek athletes did take substances that were thought to improve their efforts on fields of play.
``It's well-known that they were taking various substances that they thought would produce better performances,'' said John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and authority on doping. ``That was a no-holds-barred sports culture.'' Meat-eating Greeks David Gilman Romano, a senior research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said those athletes were known for their special diets. Greeks of antiquity largely were vegetarian, Romano wrote in an e-mail from Greece, where he is on an excavation. Athletes, though, had diets of meat -- a luxury in that age. ``But it's not like anybody was sitting in a lab with test tubes cooking up anything special,'' Wallechinsky added. That would come centuries later, after Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France revived the Games in 1896. Hoberman said that when he was researching his book ``Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport,'' he discovered that as early as the 1890s, a French physician was feeding beverages laced with heroin and cocaine to long-distance bike riders. He also found evidence that in the 1920s and '30s, substances such as oxygen, ether, chlorine, caffeine and nitroglycerin were used by athletes. ``There was a lot of drug taking, but I think a lot of it was ineffective,'' he said. ``But there was widespread interest in performance-enhancing substances.'' A substance that would be effective was anabolic steroids -- a synthetic derivative of the male hormone testosterone. It increases muscle mass and allows athletes to train longer and recover faster. The molecule was synthesized in 1935 by three pharmaceutical companies, Hoberman said, with a German firm being the first. Myth of Nazi steroid ``There is this myth of the Nazi steroid,'' Hoberman said. ``Yes, Germans were involved. But I've never found any evidence that Nazis were shooting up SS troops with steroids to make them more aggressive.'' But by the late 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, the Russians and Americans were engaged in a steroids arms race -- or should we say big-arms race? -- to make their athletes bigger and stronger. Finally the International Olympic Committee, after weighing the ethical implications, felt compelled to draw the line. ``You have to understand that the concept of this being cheating is a late 20th-century idea,'' Hoberman said. ``Before that, athletes felt they were entitled to relief from fatigue.'' The first Olympic drug testing was conducted in 1968. ``The funny thing is that the only guy who failed the doping testing that year was a Swedish modern pentathlete who tested for alcohol,'' Wallechinsky said. ``That was considered a performance-enhancing drug in shooting because it calms your nerves.'' The positive tests started to accumulate in 1972 for stimulants such as ephedrine and excessive caffeine. The first failed test for steroids came in 1976. It was only later, Wallechinsky said, that it was learned that the East Germans had been taking steroids as far back as 1968. ``It was probably the biggest secret experiment ever conducted,'' said Steven Ungerleider, an Oregon research psychologist who wrote the book ``Faust's Gold'' about the program. ``It was a reign of terror of drug use.'' The scope of East Germany's state-sponsored doping system wasn't revealed until after the Berlin Wall fell years later. About 10,000 athletes were given drugs, many without their knowledge and some as young as 12, leading to both Olympic medals and long-term health problems. Some later would give birth to children with deformities. U.S. stars, such as 1976 gold medal decathlete Bruce Jenner, knew they were competing against doped athletes. ``When I was in my last lifting workouts before the Games started in the athletes' village, there was an East German shot putter in there with me,'' Jenner recalled. ``This girl was so much stronger than I was that it was a joke. It was demoralizing. Here I am trying to win a gold medal, and this chick is outlifting me by about 100 pounds.'' 57 athletes caught Since testing began, 57 athletes have been caught at the Summer Games, with Bulgarians leading the way, followed by Americans. The most infamous case came in 1988 when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100-meter gold medal after testing for the steroid stanozolol. Why would athletes risk ruining their reputations by cheating? Wallechinsky believes it can be traced to the psychology of competition. He tells the story of four American runners making the 100-meter final at the 1920 Olympics. The U.S. coach advised them that they should drink a glass of sherry with raw egg in it. All the runners found that disgusting. But one still drank the concoction. ``Of course then the other three did, as well,'' Wallechinsky said. ``That's symbolic of the whole doping culture. How many athletes have taken steroids because their coach told them, `If you don't, you'll be the only one who isn't'? Many times they're right.'' IOC officials have vowed that the most stringent testing procedures ever will be in place at Athens. That includes 25 percent more tests with extensive screening for the blood-doping agent EPO and the widely expected unveiling of the first test for human growth hormone. ``I can say we have caught up with the cheats, and we have the tests that are needed,'' IOC President Jacques Rogge said earlier this year. Others aren't as confident. ``We're taking baby steps, but it's not going to be a clean machine in Athens,'' Ungerleider said. ``I'm sure we'll see an alphabet soup of new designer drugs. We're going to have more Olympics where we have problems.'' |
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