Doping in sport - a deadly game
Doping in antiquity
Doping in sport is not a new phenomenon; athletes have taken performance-enhancing agents since the beginning of time. The legendary Arthurian knights supposedly drank magical potions from the cup of Merlin. Our own Celtic tales describe the use of strengthening potions to aid valour in battle and the druids' use of narcotics is well documented by historians. The berserkers', a class of ancient Norse warriors who fought frenziedly, "berserk" behaviour was attributed to a deliberate diet of wild mushrooms. The Ancient Olympics in Greece were riddled with corruption and doping to the extent that the games had to be dissolved.1 In Ancient Rome, gladiators drank herbal infusions to strengthen them before chariot races and going into battle. Almost two millenia later, the first documented report in the medical literature was published in 1865 in the British Medical Journal, citing expulsion of a swimmer from an Amsterdam canal race, for taking an unnamed performance-enhancing drug.2 The first doping death occurred in 1886 in cycling.1
In the last three decades a number of names have joined the cheaters' hall of fame including Ben Johnson (stanozolol), Diane Modahl (testosterone), Dan Mitchell (testosterone), Lindford Christie (nandrolone), Olga Yegorova (erythropoetin) and Andrea Raducan (pseudoephedrine), to name a few. Johnson was abusing stanazolol and other agents for years with the help of fringe practitioners, before testing positive at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. In the UK, many were shocked by the Lindford Christie saga, however he first tested positive in 1988, at the start of his career, for the banned stimulant pseudoephedrine; not surprisingly he has now lost the contract for whiter than white whites. It was the Irish swimmer Michelle Smith de Bruin who brought the reality of doping home to our own doorstep; while the country was divided in 1998 as to whether she was a sporting Jenny or a bold deceiver, the IOC confirmed that there was "Whiskey in the Jar" and the amount therein defied all possible human consumption. The doping scourge has continued into the new millennium. Alain Baxter came from 63rd in the world to attain a bronze medal in this year's Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, only to be stripped of his medal after a positive test that could only have been attained had the nasal spray implicated been swallowed whole. Only recently, another scandal hit the headlines adding to the disrepute of cycling when Stefano Garzelli tested positive for probenecid; five of his team were either arrested, indicted or "disappeared" during police investigations.
