Multi-dollar appearance fees, contracts, national and international endorsements, and sports merchandising now represent a billion dollar industry that provides previously unheard of financial gains to athletes, coaches, sponsors, and entourage. These reasons along with the human desire to stay ahead of the peers
are responsible for an unprecedented surge in sophisticated doping programs, often at the risk of the athletes’ health. Many sport bodies, unethical medical professionals, trainers, coaches, and pharmacists work secretly driven by the millions of dollars now routinely available at sporting events.
Why Athletes Engage In Doping?
Athletes from different sport backgrounds engage in doping for different reasons. Bodybuilders and power lifters make use of drugs such as anabolic steroids to lean or bulk, add muscle mass or fat-free mass, gain strength, and improve physical appearance. Cyclists and endurance athletes use drugs such as Erythropoietin to improve oxygen transfer capacity of the body and restore glycogen reserves. Some athletes make use of hyperprotein diets and muscle-building exercises along with natural or synthetic anabolic agents to increase strength and muscular power. Performance enhancing drugs (like anabolic steroids, erythropoietin, diuretics, androstenedione, human growth hormone, creatine, and stimulants) are used to remain in good physical shape, fight stress, facilitate sleep, improve the sense of well being, enable the body to reach its utmost limits, and modify the shape of the body through hormonal manipulations.
Stance Of Anti-Doping Organizations
Anti-doping organizations such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have remarked that doping in sports is against the “spirit of sport”. Anti-doping advocates say that banned drugs can pose health risks and the public should enjoy the exemplary effect of drug-free sport and there must be equality of opportunity for athletes. On the other hand, many believe that no sport ever offered equality of opportunity for athletes as many athletes still engage in doping and are not caught while many reap the benefits of advanced sport techniques, kits, and accessories while some (especially those from poor nations) don’t even have access to basic facilities such as sport shoes and infrastructure.
History Of Doping
Doping in sport is as old as sports itself. The ancient Greeks and Romans used special diet and concoctions to enhance their physical appearance, strength, and athletic abilities. Some cyclists and endurance athletes dabbled in molecules such as caffeine, cocaine, and strychnine in the 19th century.
The real rise of high-end doping started in the 20th century as the understanding of biochemistry, molecular biology, medicine, and pharmacology improved. Soon, synthetic anabolic steroids were all over the world. Anabolic compounds such as Testosterone derivatives, Deca Durabolin, Dianabol, Anavar, Primobolan, and Trenbolone soon entered the world of amateur and professional sports, especially cycling, bodybuilding, boxing, and mixed martial arts.
Sporting authorities started testing for stimulants in 1967 and the International Olympics Committee started to test for anabolic steroids in the 1970s. The athletes and drug companies were no different. With every passing year, one can hear a new undetectable drug or designer drug or biological molecule coming up and exploited to help athletes stay close to name, fame, and rewards. Today, performance enhancing drugs have become a serious medical, legal, and ethical problem for athletic organizations and athletes. This is primarily because of the amount of money that is these days associated with winning in the sports industry of today.
With passing times, the use of banned performance enhancing drugs in sports (doping) was rendered illegal by most international sports organizations, including the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
High Profile Doping Cases
The most systematic case of doping for athletic achievements is that of the Olympic teams from East Germany of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1990, it was revealed that a majority of East German female athletes, especially swimmers, were administered anabolic androgenic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs by their trainers and coaches.
The BALCO scandal of 2003 illustrated that some athletes are ready to use drugs that are not even in the knowledge of federal agencies and anti-doping authorities. Sports doping expert Don Catlin identified the substance known as “the clear” to be the molecule Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), an anabolic steroid that has the ability to boost muscle mass by binding to the androgen receptor. Federal law-enforcement authorities caught many athletes, including American sprinter Marion Jones, MLB player Barry Bonds, and British 100-meter sprinter Dwain Chambers.
Some of the most-admired sporting icons like Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Roger Rivière, Knud Enemark Jensen, Jacques Anquetil, Levi Leipheimer, Bjarne Riis, Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, Melky Cabrera, Alex Rodriguez, Francisco Cervelli, and Ryan Braun have engaged in doping. The list of cheating athletes goes on and on.
These days, athletes commonly engage into Erythropoietin (EPO) and gene doping. These banned techniques can manipulate blood, muscle, and pain perception systems to enhance ability of athletes to train harder and longer. These performance-enhancing techniques
can even deliver blood to the exercising tissues in an improved way and improve endurance and muscle function levels.
Today, doping has become a global problem that follows amateur and professional sporting events worldwide. Success-driven athletes keen to experience results and fame in a short period of time have been using new, powerful, and undetectable doping substances and techniques for many decades, with assistance from sophisticated networks of distribution. Anti-doping officials and cheating athletes continue their game of hide-and-seek on every single day.
About the author
A NASM Certified Personal Trainer and multi-sport athlete currently working as a group instructor/personal trainer in a private gym, San Francisco, CA.