Doping in sports - history and interesting facts. A brief history of doping

Sports and doping

1.1 A brief history of doping in sport

Historians believe that the use of doping during the Olympic Games dates back to the very foundation of the competition in 776 BC. The participants in the games took hallucinogenic and pain relieving extracts from mushrooms, various herbs and wine. These drugs would have been banned today, but in ancient times, and even after the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, athletes were not prohibited from using drugs that would help them win.

By the time of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, athletes possessed a wide range of pharmacological support agents, from codeine to strychnine (which is a powerful stimulant in near-lethal doses).

One of the brightest examples of the use of doping is the story of the American marathon runner Thomas Hicks. In 1904, during a competition in St. Louis, Hicks was several kilometers ahead of his rivals. He still had more than 20 km to overcome when he lost consciousness. The coaches forced the marathon runner to drink some secret drug, after which Hicks got up and ran again. But after a few kilometers he fell down again. He was drunk again, got back on his feet and successfully finished the race, receiving the gold medal. It was later revealed that Hicks drank a drink containing strychnine, which in moderate doses is a powerful stimulant.

By 1932, sprinters were experimenting with nitroglycerin in an attempt to widen their coronary arteries, and later they began experimenting with benzidrin. But the real beginning of the modern era of doping must be considered 1935, when injectable testosterone was created. First used by Nazi doctors to increase aggression among soldiers, he later confidently entered the sport with the German Olympic athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Prior to this, Olympic champions used oral testosterone preparations, but the creation of injectable testosterone was a quantum leap and German athletes took all the gold that year.

In 1932, amphetamines also entered the sports market. During the games of the 1930s and in 1948, athletes swallowed pills, literally, by handfuls. In 1952, a skating team swallowed so many pills that the athletes fainted and were hospitalized. The International Olympic Committee has banned the use of these drugs, but for decades has relied on the conscience of athletes, coaches and the authorities of the participating countries.

In the 1940s, steroids began to be used. During their first appearance at the 1952 Olympics, the Soviet heavyweight team won every medal possible in that category. Rumor has it that the athletes used hormonal steroids. Since these games in Helsinki were considered not only a competition between athletes, but also an arena for the struggle between communism and capitalism, the coach of the American team made a statement that the United States would not lag behind the USSR and would compete on “equal terms”.

In 1955, physiologist John Ziegler developed a modified synthetic testosterone molecule with enhanced anabolic properties for the US weightlifting team. It was the first artificial anabolic steroid - methandrostenolone (trade name Dianabol).

The invented Dianabol soon became widely available and a must-have for weightlifters, soccer players, runners, and game sports athletes. Its use increased protein synthesis and helped muscles recover faster after hard training. In both sprinters and strength athletes, this drug increases nervous arousal, resulting in more powerful muscle contractions. This is the basis for greater speed and better response.

By the early 1960s, according to one NFL player, coaches were filling salad bowls with Dianabol and placing them on the table. Athletes took handfuls of pills and seized them with bread. They called it "breakfast of champions".

In 1958, an American pharmaceutical company began producing anabolic steroids. Despite the fact that it soon became clear that these drugs have serious side effects, it was already too late to withdraw them from the market, since they were in great demand among athletes.

In 1968, the International Olympic Committee introduced a procedure for compulsory urine tests for athletes to detect doping.

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The International Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rejoiced at the first cases of a positive doping test, 31 years after the introduction of the testing practice. (Actually, the Finnish athletes were caught for oversight with their luggage, which was stuffed with "chemistry").

WADA President Dick Pound announced: "Athletes competing" clean "must be confident that unscrupulous doping opponents will be exposed, with all the ensuing consequences."

Yes, this is the same Dick Pound who is also the Vice President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC keeps WADA under its wing to ensure that this "independent" doping agency is acting in accordance with the concept announced by the International Olympic Committee. And why did Pound do it? What will he smoke now if the IOC has put marijuana on the list of prohibited substances ?!
The systematic use of doping in sports for more than 50 years has brought standards to unattainable heights, so unattainable that no one can achieve them without the help of "chemistry". All the benefits of doping were described in a secret report from the East German intelligence service STASI (STASI) back in 1968, long before the doping test reached its peak. In this post, Dr. Manfred Hopner recommends a total "chemicalization" of all East German athletes. Over the next 20 years, with the help of pharmacology, East German athletes rewrote all the record books.
How has progress in world sports been possible - even without taking into account the East German achievements - since the fall of Communism, if the sport is "pure"? Either the vast majority of top athletes are deeply into chemistry, or they are not human. Don't panic! WADA will protect these supreme alien beings from accidental contact with terrestrial pharmacology.
WADA's sermons may seem to be directed at athletes, but in fact, messages about ethics and "cleanliness" are aimed at an uninformed audience in order to protect multi-billion dollar sponsorships and television airtime. Extraterrestrial fantasies aside! Athletes walk on the ground and, although they do not admit it, consider all these sermons to be Edund. Read on and you will understand this too.

History of "chemistry" in competitive sports

Whenever a win was significant, athletes looked for an edge over the competition, and doping in sports is as old as the sport itself. Attempts to increase testosterone levels were already under way as early as 776 BC, when Olympic athletes swallowed lamb testicles, which were the main source of additional testosterone. Older athletes have used cola plants, hashish, cactus stimulants, Amanita muscaria mushrooms, and other simple remedies with varying success.

The first recorded modern doping case surfaced in 1865 with Dutch swimmers using stimulants. Towards the end of the 19th century, European cyclists were injecting themselves with various "miracle" drugs, which included substances ranging from caffeine to cocaine, which helped to cope with the pain and exhaustion inherent in the sport.
By the time of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, athletes possessed a wide range of pharmacological support agents, from codeine to strychnine (which is a powerful stimulant in near-lethal doses). At the 1904 Olympics, American Thomas Hicks, who won the marathon, was pumped out by four doctors after taking brandy with added cocaine and strychnine as a stimulant. Of course, he still received his gold medal.

By 1932, sprinters were experimenting with nitroglycerin in an attempt to widen their coronary arteries, and later they began experimenting with benzidrin. But the real beginning of the modern era of doping must be considered 1935, when injectable testosterone was created. First used by Nazi doctors to increase aggression among soldiers, he later confidently entered the sport with the German Olympic athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Before that, Olympic champions had used oral testosterone - especially Paavo Nurmi with Rejuvin in the 1920s - but the creation of injectable testosterone was a quantum leap and, contrary to the legend of Jesse Owens, German athletes took all the gold that year.

After World War II, the Russians used German scientists with their knowledge of sports pharmacology to train Soviet athletes. The goal of the USSR is to dominate world sports. This was necessary for the political establishment of the Soviets. And this was achieved already at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, where the Soviet national team made its debut. The sudden success of the Soviet national team (and the piles of used syringes in the locker rooms) came as a complete surprise to everyone and raised many eyebrows in surprise, especially in the United States, where the experience of Nazi scientists was also used. The first shots of the Cold War fired on the world sports arena.
Soon, American athletes using injectable testosterone discovered its limitations. Testosterone has the same androgenic and anabolic activity. Thus, an increase in the anabolic effect with increasing dosage led to an increase in side effects, including virilization in women and prostate problems in men. There is a need for a new, better tool. Without it, further improvement in results was impossible. American science was deeply puzzled.

Anabolic Era - Breakfast of Champions

Invented by Ciba Pharmaceuticals, Dianabol soon became widely available and a must-have for weightlifters, soccer players, runners and athletes in playing sports. Its use increased protein synthesis and helped muscles recover faster after hard training. In both sprinters and strength athletes, this drug increases nervous arousal, resulting in more powerful muscle contractions. This is the basis for greater speed and better response.
By the early 1960s, according to one NFL player, coaches were filling satatnits with Dianabol and placing them on the table. Athletes took handfuls of pills and seized them with bread. They called it "breakfast of champions".

Pandemic 1968

The information went beyond the narrow circle and the steroids spread quickly. They began to be used in the training of athletes all over the world. In 1968, more advanced steroids were created in East Germany, an unprecedented doping program was carried out to prepare the national team.

In the same year, two Olympians, who unexpectedly for everyone incredibly successfully performed at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, arrived at the training camp of the US Olympic team at Lake Tahoe on a mission. With evangelical zeal, they told everyone about the benefits of steroids and attributed their sports success to Dianabol. Many athletes began the course immediately after hearing reviews about this drug.

An interesting fact is that in 1968 the first complaint about steroids was recorded. This complaint did not come from the sports authorities, but from the World Health Organization. Apparently steroids in third world countries were often used by doctors for the purpose of enrichment. Doctors were very creative in looking for reasons to prescribe steroids. And they cured everything from malnutrition to menstrual problems. A remarkable coincidence: the first two lines of the list of countries from the WHO report were Kenya and Jamaica, countries that showed a phenomenal leap in sports at the 1968 Olympics.

Break the rules or lose

Gold Medal Recipes

In the race to excellence in sports pharmacology, research has been carried out around the world to create a better method of using steroids. Russian studies with experiments on rats have shown that the most effective dose of Dianabol is 5 mg per 1 kg of live weight. Building on this, Soviet sprinters began using approximately 35 mg per day in long courses. In the course of these experiments, the so-called "receptor plugging" phenomenon was discovered. Ultimately, a defense reaction was triggered against prolonged over-stimulation of receptors and the closure of some of them in an attempt to maintain the constancy of the internal environment of the body (homeostasis).

To maintain the same level of stimulation, it was necessary either to continuously increase the dosage until side effects set an upper limit followed by rest from the drug to return to normal, or to change the drug or combine it with something else to maintain affinity for the receptors. The Russians could not solve this problem and adopted the concept of "key years of sporting achievement", taking steroids for 1-2 years with subsequent cancellation, in order to be at the peak of their athletic form throughout the year.

I remember a conversation with Yuri Sedykh, the world record holder in hammer throw, when he learned about the boycott of the Soviet team at the 1984 Olympic Games. "I didn’t take steroids all 1983 and lost the world championships just to be ready for the Olympics, and now the boycott!" Yuri Sedykh set the world record several times during 1984, but he never won the main victory he was striving for. "

East Germany approached the problem differently. They developed a system based on the intake of 0.125 mg Turinabol (East German version of Dianabol) per kilogram of lean body weight. Their optimal dosage was much less than the Soviet dosage and was effective for several years in a row. In addition, they cycled the steroid intake in order to maintain the affinity for the receptors.

The standard plan for the chemicalization of sprinters was to conduct 5 courses a year. The first course began in November and lasted 4 weeks followed by 2 weeks off. The second course started in mid-December and lasted 6 weeks, followed by 4 weeks of home competition in February. The third course began on March 1st and lasted 4 weeks, after a 2-week break.
The fourth course, again 4 weeks long, took place before the first away competition, which ran from mid-May to mid-June. Finally, the fifth and final six-week course was held before the main competition in mid-August. If the main competition was held at a different time, then all preparation throughout the season changed accordingly.
This system allowed me to be on chemistry 24 weeks a year, and rest the rest of the year. The dosage increased throughout the year, with a peak in the last six-week course. Since the doctors were unable to determine the best time of day to take steroids, the dose was split into several doses throughout the day to maintain the same level. This system maintained affinity for the receptors and, with gradual dosage increases, allowed athletes to progress year after year.

The maximum officially sanctioned dose recorded in the archives of the STASI for female sprinters was 1,650 mg per year, which averaged 9.8 mg / day over the course, or an average of 4.5 mg / day over the year. For male sprinters - 1850 mg / year, which averaged 11 mg / day during the course or 5 mg / day on average throughout the year. Despite the minuscule dosage by bodybuilding standards, it worked with confidence!

The appearance of growth hormone

In the mid-70s, a new drug, Growth Hormone, was introduced in East Germany. Most of the information relating to this period was removed from the archives of the STASI, so little is known about the results of its use, but obviously something went wrong, as it was stopped in 1982, and the information was destroyed after the collapse of Communism.
Dr. Hartmut Hommel, the personal physician of Marita Koch, a 400-meter record holder, admitted that the GR was used until 1982, but did not disclose the details, for fear of being convicted as a political criminal. According to him, when he was appointed to the post, the Athletics Federation instructed him not to use growth hormone anymore.
He later discovered that it was not human growth hormone that was being used, but one derived from pigs! Apparently the East German authorities did not find enough currency to buy Swedish human growth hormone. In any case, the results in sports have grown without him.
Dr. Hommel has noticed difficulties in getting information about the real picture of doping in East Germany. Despite the fact that he was the personal physician of Marita Koch, appointed by the federation, he could not influence the program of her pharmaceutical support. Marita has filed complaints about this. In 1981, she turned to STASI, believing that her main GDR rival Barbel Wockel received more and better funds. her uncle was the president of Yenpharm, the main steroid manufacturer in East Germany.

Baritones in the pool

Not all sports in the GDR used such advanced chemistry as athletics. For the swimming team, testosterone remained the main drug in preparation for the 1976 Olympics. The side effects of the women's team became more and more obvious, especially the low voices. When the media started asking questions to the head coach, he replied: "We are here to win in swimming, not in singing."

Of course, now the pig in a poke could not be hidden and others were free to copy East German methods. Sports doctors from the Swimming Federation decided to take the doping program to the next level for the 1978 World Championship. Testosterone has been replaced by secret hormone cocktails. The swimming team that defeated rivals in 1976 was torn to pieces at the 1978 World Championships. In the GDR, all medical personnel were fired and returned to "basics."

World champions in ... doping

"The Russians know several doping agents, the Germans know a little more, but the Americans are the world doping champions." This statement belongs to Manfred Donika, former head of the doping testing laboratory and the IOC Medical Commissioner. This audacious claim comes from a record number of American athletes who tested positive. Now everyone agreed that America was number 1.

To be continued...

November 20th, 2015

I once told you how, but here is a slightly different story. Doping.

From time immemorial, athletes have used almost any means for the sake of success. Victory in the sport of great achievements has always been accompanied by material benefits and fame. At the dawn of human civilization, when the norms of morality and ethics were significantly different from modern ones, and the concept of "fair play" meant "anything to win", athletes used all possible means to achieve victory, and did not consider it shameful.

Several millennia later, the overall picture, by and large, has changed very little.

Back in 2007, Washington Post sports commentator Sally Jenkins tried to explain why the idea of doping, despite all the restrictions and prohibitions, does not die and takes on more and more sophisticated forms: “The harsh truth is that great athletes are fundamentally different from you and me. They are nothing more than a whim of nature, with supernatural coordination of movements or peripheral vision, which they, by a happy coincidence, fished out of the genetic pool. In practice, they are just a different species. In addition, they are often cold representatives of the upper elite, whose moral code has nothing to do with ours. They believe that it is completely unnatural to deliberately ignore any opportunity to improve their physical condition. "

Here's how the history of the development and use of stimulating substances in sports has evolved from ancient times to the present day.

776 BC - 393 AD

In the ancient Olympics, it was not allowed to pre-negotiate results and play giveaways. Everything else - please. Charles Yezalis, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, who studies the history of drugs that improve physical fitness, believes that the ancient Olympians drank special infusions of herbs in wine, took hallucinogens, and also abused meat, which in ancient Greece was not eaten every day, and especially on the hearts and testicles of animals.

“Humanity has never known pure sport,” he said.

He is echoed by another sports historian, William Blake Tyrrell, author of The Smell of Sweat: Greek Athletes, the Olympics and Culture: “Victory was for everyone! If they thought that rhino horn would help them, then they ground it into powder and took it with wine. "

Ancient Rome, 1st century

Roman gladiators also did not disdain hallucinogens and used strychnine, which in small doses has a stimulating effect. Even the horses participating in chariot races did not escape doping: they were given low alcohol honey to make them run even faster.

End of the 19th century

Professor of the American biotechnical research institute The Hastings Center Thomas Murray wrote in his article "The Forced Force of Drugs in Sports" that the modern use of stimulant drugs in sports began at the end of the 19th century: "Mariani wine, widespread at the end of the 19th century in Europe and America [ drink made from Bordeaux wine with coca leaves] was called “wine for athletes”. It was used by French cyclists and even, it is said, by members of the lacrosse team. Coca and cocaine were very popular because they helped fight fatigue and numbed the hunger caused by vigorous exercise. "

1904-1920

The revival of the Olympic movement also led to the return of fitness drugs, or doping, to sports.
At the 1904 St. Louis Games British American marathon runner Tom Hicks finished second. However, his opponent was disqualified, as he traveled part of the way by car, and Hicks received his gold medal.

At the same time, as Hicks's coach Charles Luc later said, he won with doping. Seven miles to the finish line (about 11 km), Hicks fainted. The coach gave him an injection - one milligram of strychnine sulfate - and gave it all to wash down with a sip of brandy. Hicks ran on, but after three miles he stalled again, and the coach repeated the injection. Hicks somehow finished the distance, after which he immediately went to the hospital.

The author of Performance Enhancers and Drugs, Mark Gold, wrote that the blend of strychnine, heroin, cocaine and caffeine has been widely used by both athletes and their coaches, each developing their own unique formula. This practice was widespread until the 1920s, when heroin and cocaine began to be dispensed exclusively by prescription. ”

1928 - First prohibition of doping in sports

It is a certain irony that the first international sports federation to ban doping was the IAAF Athletics Federation.

In 1928, the following provisions were included in the Federation's rulebook: “Doping is the use of any stimulant that is not a common means of improving performance in athletics above average. Any person who knowingly takes or assists in taking the aforementioned drugs will be excluded from any competition subject to these rules, or suspended from further participation in amateur athletics competitions held under the jurisdiction of this federation. "

Despite a certain confusion and archaic formulation, the idea is clear: if you do not play by the rules, then you will not play at all.

1945-1967

This period is characterized by two processes: the increase in the use of doping in sports, and the expansion of anti-doping measures.
The first effective doping drugs were amphetamines, stimulants of the nervous system, with which the armies of the United States, Britain, as well as Germany and Japan supplied their soldiers during World War II.

In the 1950s, their use migrated to sports. Amphetamines, codenamed "la bomba" for Italian cyclists and "atoom" for Dutch cyclists, helped to cope with fatigue from strenuous exercise.

In 1958 American physician John Vosley Ziegler developed the first anabolic steroid called Dianabol.
Legend has it that in 1954 Ziegler was in Vienna, where he accompanied the American weightlifting team. There he also met his colleague - the doctor of the Soviet national team. In the process of acquaintance, accompanied by moderate alcohol consumption, the Soviet doctor asked Ziegler several times: "What do you give your guys?" Ziegler did not quite understand what was being asked of him and decided to "return" the question. "What do YOU give to your guys?" - he asked. The Soviet doctor replied that his athletes were receiving testosterone.

Back in the US, Ziegler tested testosterone on himself and on American weightlifters. On the one hand, muscle mass began to grow by leaps and bounds, on the other, side effects appeared.
Then Ziegler set out to synthesize a substance that would have the same positive effect as testosterone, but would not have side effects. This is how the first anabolic steroid was born, the use of which was approved by the FDA - the US Food and Drug Administration.
Later, Ziegler was very sorry for his discovery: "I would like to completely rewrite this chapter of my life."

August 26, 1960 doping has its first victim: Danish cyclist Knut Jenssen collapsed during the 100-kilometer race at the Olympics in Rome. An autopsy revealed traces of amphetamine in his blood.
July 13, 1967 British cyclist Tommy Simpson died during the 13th leg of the famous Tour de France. Simpson's motto was: "If a dozen [pills, capsules, syringes, doses, underline] kill you, take nine and win!" He encouraged himself with a huge amount of amphetamines, washed down with brandy. In the end, his body simply refused to function any further, and Simpson died.

1967-1976

After the tragic death of Simpson, the fight against doping in sports went on at a rapid pace:

1980 – 1999

September 27, 1988 Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal at the Seoul Olympics after testing positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol. Johnson claimed that someone poured a banned drug into his herbal tea, but the Olympic authorities did not believe him and suspended the athlete from the competition for two years.

The fall of the communist bloc led to the emergence of many unpleasant aspects of socialist reality.
In 1991, Michael Janowski, an international columnist for the New York Times, wrote: “The incredible superiority of the East German women's swimming team for nearly two decades, it turned out, was based on the systematic use of anabolic steroids, which was used by about 20 former coaches.
Their confessions have become the most compelling evidence that the sports administration of the communist states has made doping a key part of the training program for the country's elite athletes.

The confessions of East German coaches confirmed what coaches and athletes from rival teams had already known or suspected for years, even though no East German swimmer had ever been punished for doping.

The International Olympic Committee and other major world sports federations do not retrospectively punish athletes without recognition from the athlete. As a result, the athletes involved in this scandal do not risk losing either their medals or their records. ”

In 1994 at the Asian Games in Hiroshima 11 Chinese athletes, including 7 swimmers, tested positive for doping. Chinese athletes have been stripped of nine of the 23 gold medals they won.

November 10, 1999 the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA was created. The decision to create it was made at the World Conference Against Doping in Sport, which was held in Lausanne in February of the same year. In accordance with the Lausanne Declaration, the agency was supposed to start full-fledged work already at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

2000 - 2015

In 2002 fighters for fair sports got another powerful weapon in their hands: the American biochemist Dr. Don Kathleen was the first to develop a test that allows synthesized anabolic steroids to be found in the urine of athletes. Before he came up with his technology, athletes who used synthesized steroids, as a rule, managed to get out of the water.

Two years later, in 2004 year, the fight against doping was already so widespread and successful that WADA decided to even soften the rules a little and ... removed caffeine from the list of prohibited drugs. There were two reasons for this: firstly, it turned out that too much caffeine in the blood negatively affects athletic performance, and secondly, they decided not to punish those athletes whose metabolism processes caffeine at a somewhat non-standard rate.

For four years, from 2009 to 2013 the Western press wrote a lot about large-scale doping "at the state level" in the GDR.
Last year, the American magazine Newsweek published an article on the training program for athletes in the GDR, which stated: “Between 1964 and 1988, this country [GDR] of less than 17 million people won 454 medals in the Summer Olympics alone. According to the Stasi, doping was an integral part of the country's superbly organized athletic training program. "

In 2012 the biggest doping scandal covered cycling: American cyclist Lance Armstrong was deprived of all his seven Tour de France victories.

In 2015 the International Athletics Federation (IAAF) and Russia were at the center of the doping allegations.

Professor Charles Yezalis of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States explains the incessant battles on the fields of pharmacological battles.

“Our society,” he writes in The History of Doping in Sport, “encourages and rewards speed, strength, size, aggression, and above all, victory. The problem of doping, like other drugs, is a demand-driven problem. This demand is not limited by the demand of athletes for drugs that improve their fitness, but also by the demand of fans for the highest level of achievement that doping brings. It can be argued that the behavior of athletes and sports officials is in line with the demands of the “consumers” of big sport. This is the main question: how much do sports fans really care about doping in sports? Most likely, most of them do not really approve of doping. But most importantly, does their disapproval go so far as to turn off the TV? "

And a little more about sports for you: look at, and here. This is probably, and here is The original article is on the site InfoGlaz.rf The link to the article this copy was made from is

Soon the London Olympics and no one doubts that we will witness not only sports victories, but also new doping scandals. It would seem quite customary to observe endless battles between the developers of doping drugs and anti-doping services. And if doping has existed for as long as the sport itself has existed, then the fight against doping, at least officially, began about forty years ago.

Drugs and Arsenic for Victory

The IOC has defined doping as any manipulation of biologically active fluids or the introduction of drugs into the human body that artificially increase the physical capabilities of an athlete. However, if we turn our gaze to history. We can easily notice the use of certain doping drugs at all times. For example, Greek Olympic athletes enjoyed eating lamb testicles, a natural source of testosterone, the progenitor of all anabolic steroids. Different peoples have used different sources of "fitness improvement", ranging from fly agarics to coca and hashish.

The word "doping" originated in sports circles, among equestrian sportsmen and comes from the English dope, in Russian transcription meaning the verb "to pump up".

For the first time, according to sports documents, the use of doping by an athlete was recorded in 1865 during a swimming competition. But in 1886, the world's first death from doping was recorded (during a marathon, a cyclist participating in a race died). Although this incident did not stop any of the athletes, and by the time of the revival of the Olympics, in 1896, athletes were already using various kinds of stimulants with might and main. At times, stimulants were so “exotic” that they would terrify any modern sports coach. For example, at the Olympics in 1904, in St. Louis, a marathon participant from the United States, Thomas Hicks, seriously (several kilometers) separated from his rivals, suddenly fell in the middle of the distance, losing consciousness. The coaches who ran up poured some liquid into Hicks's mouth, and he got up and was able to run for several kilometers. However, Hicks lost consciousness for the second time, and again the coaches poured the same liquid into his mouth, thanks to which Thomas Hicks became an Olympic champion. Note that all the actions of the coaches were carried out absolutely openly, no one interfered with them, because then there was no WADA with its anti-doping rules. An ordinary brandy with ... strychnine was used as a miraculous cocktail, which so remarkably helped the athlete to come to the finish line first. Such a cocktail, brandy with strychnine, is naturally the most common poison, but in small doses it is a sports stimulant.

However, the experience of Hicks' coaches with the use of poison as a stimulant was not the only one. The European champion in 1946, in the 5 km race, was the Englishman Sidney Wooderson, who just before the start injected himself with ... arsenic.
Athletes try not to advertise the means by which they achieve super results during their sports careers and they talk about their tricks only in their memoirs.

Breakfast of Champions

As we have seen, doping has always existed, at all times, but the industry of its mass use owes its origin to the totalitarianisms of various countries, which transferred sports to the category of propaganda and politics of their regime. For the first time, "chemical records" were set in 1936, at the Berlin Olympics. At that time, German doctors invented the drug testosterone, a hormone in excess of which in the blood stimulates an increase in muscle mass.

Of course, steroids dominated strength sports like weightlifting. Most other sports were dominated by amphetamines, very close psychostimulants, cocaine analogues. Amphetamines are capable of enhancing the action of adrenaline and are capable of artificially creating a stressful situation, discovered in 1929 by the Frenchman Hans Selye. Amphetamines have formed the still prevailing opinion about doping drugs, which is that doping is a synonym for an absolutely foreign, synthetic substance that can cause a powerful surge of strength for a short time, followed by the obligatory destruction of the body.

However, the possible early death of almost none of the athletes at that time did not frighten at the training bases, and in the Olympic villages, the athletes had vases with amphetamine tablets in their rooms, and the Olympians swallowed them uncontrollably in whole handfuls. And only at the Olympics in 1952, when several skaters were hospitalized with a diagnosis of an overdose of amphitamines, Mok decided to ban these drugs for use by athletes. Although this time can not yet be considered the beginning of the war on doping, because the ban on the use of amphitamines was rather formal and for its prohibition, athletes were not punished by any sanctions. Compliance with the ban was attributed to the moral side of the issue and was left to the discretion of the coaches and sports authorities of the countries.

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Boris Valiev decided to call several familiar veterans of Russian sports, those whose names are still in the air, and ask them to comment on what happened, perhaps, the loudest doping scandal in the history of Russian sports, after which the heads of four Olympic champions in athletics, two world champions, flew. medalist and head coach of the national team.

WHERE DOES REZAZADE'S SNOWDROP COME FROM?

It would seem, what is easier, because everything is on the surface? So that at once, in one bottle, there are four winners of the Games (and you say that the title of Olympic champion is forever) ... An unprecedented scandal! The guilt of the fined athletes is proven - criticize for health and in the name of health, since doping in sports is a deception, a scam and a crime. But, no - almost everyone refused. In a categorical form! Why do you think? Right! They did not want to be hypocritical, because not everything is so simple. They probably know perfectly well and not by hearsay that it is impossible to run a hundred-meter distance in less than 10 seconds without additional stimulating injections, to lift a barbell weighing over 260 kg or to walk 50 km in 3.5 hours under the scorching sun. The human body is simply not capable of this without special support. Nevertheless, today the struggle for leadership in elite sports is being conducted in the immediate vicinity of precisely such heights, and if it were not for this, there would be no such thing as professional sports.

I have seen some of the current world records myself. Here, for example, is the highest achievement among weightlifters in the double event in the heavyweight category - 472 kg, lifted by Iranian Hossein Rezazade at the Sydney Olympics. Outplayed, what can I say, then all the Iranians in the use of some kind of "miracle drug." Just as the Chinese did it at the Beijing Olympics. Remember, for example, how the Chinese woman Liu Chunghun, who had not performed there for more than two years, beat our current two-time world champion Oksana Slivenko by almost 20 kg (!), After which she safely ended her career, leaving behind three world records still in force (in snatch, clean and jerk and total) in the 69 kg weight category? Or maybe they simply did not want to touch them, as the weightlifting teams of Bulgaria and Romania were touched in the same Sydney, and after the Games - the Armenian super heavyweight Ashot Danielyan, after whose disqualification, the bronze medal passed to the leader of the Russian team, the Olympic champion Antlanta - 96 to Andrey Chemerkin.

I remember how Andrei's personal trainer Vladimir Kniga was "tearing up and thrashing" after those competitions:

Chemerkin, as a master, grew up in full view, constantly progressing for seven years, and who is Rezazade? He repeated like a spell. - Look through the official lists of the best juniors in the world in recent years, there is no person with that last name. Where did this "snowdrop" come from?

Kniga was right: he was not among the best, but he was among the participants of the 1998 World Junior Championships in Sofia, and Vladimir Nikitich did not remember him, probably because, having lifted a modest 170 kg in the snatch, he quickly failed all three attempts in the clean and jerk. However, the following year, at the adult world championship in Athens, Rezazade set a world record in the snatch, exceeding his result of a year and a half ago by 36 (!) Kg, and pushed 32.5 kg more than he tried in Sofia. Just fantastic, which I also happened to see with my own eyes ...

Seven years later, before the 2006 World Cup, the already two-time Olympic champion Rezazade in the same fantastic way escaped the “firing squad” fate of nine (!) Of his teammates, with whom he was preparing for this competition. His doping test was the only one with a negative result, but he still did not go to the championship, and soon left the platform for good. He headed the Iranian national team in 2008, but was dismissed the following season after the then president of the Iranian Weightlifting Federation disqualified the entire national team for incessant doping scandals. Conclusions, as they say, do it yourself ...

Against the background of such achievements, Yuri Vlasov and Leonid Zhabotinsky, who performed in those days when there was no fight against doping as such, look like rural strongmen-lovers. Why is there Rezazade or Vasily Alekseev with Andrei Chemerkin! The results of Jabotinsky and Vlasov, who had three Olympic gold medals for two, by the 70s had submitted to light heavyweights and even middleweight Yurik Vardanyan.

THE COACH SAID: IT IS NECESSARY, THE MINISTER ANSWERED: WILL

However, if until the mid-60s there was no such thing as "the fight against doping", this does not mean that doping did not exist. Anabolic drugs were preceded by psychotropic, amphetamines. One of the legends of the journalistic workshop of "Soviet Sport" Stanislav Tokarev once said that in 1959, in his presence at a narrow meeting dedicated to the results of the World Bicycle Race, the head coach of our team Leonid Sheleshnev directly told the Minister of Sports of the USSR Nikolai Romanov: "If we have they will not have the means that they have, we will not see victories. " Romanov replied: "I think we will resolve the issue positively."

According to Tokarev, the first pack of pills was handed over to ours in Rome before the Olympics-60 by an Italian coach in revenge for his superiors who dismissed him. After the finish of the 100-kilometer team race, the most talented cyclist Alexei Petrov almost gave up his soul to God - Romanov himself dragged him to pump it out ... In that race, as you know, Danish athlete Knud Jensen died right in the saddle ...

BOLT RECORDS WAITING AT LEAST 2039

But I will continue about the highest sporting achievements, in particular about the world records in running at 100 (9.58) and 200 (19.19) meters in men, whose birth was also lucky to behold with my own eyes? Take ten steps forward and look around: how impressive is the distance to the point from where you started? So, the current fastest man on the planet, the Jamaican Usain Bolt, overcomes it in less than a second! Bolt's records were called "physiological leap into the future" by some scientists, according to whose calculations such seconds should have been shown no earlier than 2039. But what about the well-known statement of the practitioner, the famous American sprinter Carl Lewis, made back in the late 80s, that no athlete who does not take special drugs can run a 100-meter distance in less than 10 seconds? Was he not to know ?! Although then, trying to explain the reason for the incredible success of his main competitor, Canadian Ben Johnson, he did not yet know that he would soon run out of ten seconds himself? And he certainly did not expect from himself that, having retired in the rank of 9-time Olympic champion, he admits that he was caught on doping in 1988, but by the decision of the US Olympic Committee he was admitted to the competition, as well as over 100 other American athletes who failed doping control between 1988 and 2000.

Well, in this regard, how not to recall his compatriot Florence Griffith-Joyner, a woman with a muscle relief, who was the envy of many male athletes? Until 1988, she was just a good sprinter. And then - in one Olympic season, suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a fantastic breakthrough - three gold medals at the Games in Seoul, plus two simply phenomenal world records at distances of 100 (10.49) and 200 (21.34) meters. today, unlike their mistress, who left us in 1998 at the age of 38 ...

"WITHOUT THIS ANYWHERE .."

Any reasonable person understands that without this (doping - B.V.) today nowhere - the whole sport is on this. In 1999, she plowed for six months, beat everyone in the summer, won all the estimates and did not use anything, she was clean. And winter came - it began to lose to everyone. How so? It became a shame, and I consciously went to this "acupuncture". That year, not only won the World Championship in the relay, but also caught something at the World Cup stages. And it really helped me, - the world's only Olympic champion in two winter sports (cross-country skiing and biathlon) Anfisa Reztsova stunned everyone six years ago with such revelations.

However, she was a pioneer in this. Even earlier, for example, Natalya Artemova, the winner of the 1991 Grand Prix in the 1500 meters, did it:
- Pharmacological preparation was no less important for me than training. If I did not use anabolic steroids, I would become disabled, - she was sure. - It is simply impossible to endure the superloads of today's big sport due to the internal reserves of the body ...

Tennis player Andre Agassi, athletes Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Lyudmila Narozhilenko-Endk vist, Tim Montgomery, Vladimir Kiselev, skier Mika Mullyulya, biathletes Dmitry Yaroshenko, Frank Luc, cyclist Lance Armstrong ...

How many of those who proudly bore the title of world record holders, stood on the Olympic pedestals, the podiums of the world and European championships, and then suddenly turned into social outcasts, criminals from sports! Track and field athletes Irina Korzhanenko, Ben Johnson, Yuri Belonog, Robert Fazekash, Nadezhda Ostapchuk, Andrean Anush, cyclist Tyler Hamilton, gymnast Andrea Radukan, weightlifters Isabella Dragneva, Zbignev Kachmarek, Dmitry Berestov, Angel Genchev, skiers, Lokhan Miusa Lyubov Egorova, wrestler Alexander Leipold, swimmer Rick Demont, equestrian Kian O'Connor ... These are only those who experienced the joy of Olympic victories. And this list can be continued. Now their ranks were joined by athletes Olga Kaniskina, Valery Borchin, Sergey Kirdyapkin and Yulia Zaripova, and a little earlier - Pak Tae Hwan, the first swimmer in the history of South Korea to win an Olympic medal (he has four in total, or four so far) ...

Even more impressive are the "black lists" of silver and bronze medalists - the size, the constellation of names and the questions that arise when looking at them, and, in particular: what to think about those who are not tainted, to whom these, stuffed with doping, have lost?

IF THE HARES HAVE GUNS ...

From all of the above, naturally, an ideal formula does not follow, from which it would follow that doping in elite sports is used by everyone. But I am convinced that in those forms where athletic training is the decisive factor, everyone uses it. Or, for safety reasons, I will say, "almost everything."

Someone, perhaps, will be hurt by such categoricalness, someone, for certain, will be indignant, but meanwhile it is precisely such an unambiguous position that is the starting point in any “doping business” among those who are empowered as fighters for the purity of sports. God forbid, if illegal drugs are found in the analysis of an athlete or changes in physiological parameters are revealed using the data of his biological passport, it is no longer possible to prove that this is not the athlete's fault. Do you know why? Because those who allegedly fight against doping are absolutely convinced, like me, that professional athletes cannot do without stimulants.

Remember the scandal with the 2005 world shot put champion Nadezhda Ostapchuk from Belarus, who did not undergo doping control after winning the 2012 Olympic Games in London? How then did her personal trainer Alexander Efimov sincerely regret that, in wanting to be on the safe side, he secretly poured the forbidden metenalon into his student's food, repented so sincerely that he was even ready, as he put it, to change his last name to Idiot?

Earlier, the coach of the Russian (and later Swedish) hurdler player Lyudmila Narozhilenko-Endk vist Nikolai Narozhilenko took on the same blame.

In 2007, the coach of the Belarusian athlete, bronze medalist of the 2005 European Women's Wrestling Championship, Vasilisa Marzalyuk, accused the representatives of the Russian national team of doping his student during the joint training camp.

And the story of the Russian cyclist disqualified by the French before the Games in Beijing, two-time world champion in the team race (1993-1994), the winner of the women's race “Giro d'Italia-2002” Svetlana Bubnenkova, whose doping test was taken, as the then president assured Cycling Federation of Russia Alexander Gusyatnikov, with unrealistic violations?

There are a lot of such examples. Not all of them look plausible, but, on the other hand, agree, theoretically (and practically) the same Efimov could have added doping to his student's food, just like rivals in the case of Marzalyuk? There is no one hundred percent proof that this was not their doing. However, there is not a single clause in the rules of anti-doping fighters that protects the rights of an athlete whose sample contains prohibited drugs. The athlete is always to blame for any doping scandal. No one is interested in how this drug got into their body. Did he consciously accept it or was he framed? Did this substance help him or vice versa?

There is a hunt for hares, which, as you know, do not have guns to defend themselves. And no lawyers, even those with a worldwide reputation, are able to help (the case with Lazutina and Danilova, who tried to justify themselves in the Lausanne Court of Arbitration, proved this once again), because, I repeat, the “anti-doping fighters” are initially convinced that the results that determine leadership in modern sports cannot be shown only at the expense of the reserves of one's own body.

SPOT SHOOTING

In the world, in the history of civilization, there are several examples of gigantic lies. For example, a communist lie. The world fight against doping in sports, in my opinion, is in the same row. In two years, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the fight against doping, or, more precisely, the so-called. The IOC Medical Commission was created in 1967, and the first athlete to be disqualified for doping was a participant in the 1968 Summer Olympics, Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenvall, whose analysis revealed prohibited ethanol, or simply alcohol. The day before, he drank two bottles of beer in order, as he later explained, to calm his nerves.

And after the Games, it turned out that more than a third of the US track and field team participating in them, including the gold medalists in the decathlon and shot put, were using drugs. Why this remained without consequences, history is silent.

A lot of money is being spent on this so-called struggle today. Judge for yourself. One drug test costs approximately $ 500. For example, in the 2012 Olympic year, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Anti-Doping Service alone took 5,817 samples. In 2013, she did it 4,355 times. In the same year, 2,338 samples were taken by the National Anti-Doping Services in collaboration with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). These figures can roughly represent the total costs.

Sometimes, however, it comes to insanity. So, I don’t remember at which All-African Sports Games the costs of the doping service exceeded the budget of the competition itself.
What is this all for? What have the so-called anti-doping fighters achieved in these nearly fifty years? What can they, besides how to break the fate of a good athlete, such as Ben Johnson, Larisa Lazutina or Lance Armstrong (because no doping will help a bad athlete)?

Caring for the health of athletes? Why doesn't anyone care about the health of miners, for example?

You say that the number of athletes convicted of doping is decreasing. Well, first of all, it's debatable. And secondly, this is not an indicator, because the "shooting" is selective. The indicator is the sky-high results of the current leaders, some of which are thirty years ahead of scientists' calculations. The indicator is the statements of the athletes themselves, the Olympic champions, that "without doping today, nowhere - the whole sport is on this."

The fight against doping in the form in which it exists is, I repeat, "spot shooting" (otherwise it’s just right to put an end to professional sports with all the ensuing consequences). In this regard, I believe that doping will never be defeated, because no matter how blasphemous it sounds, no one wants it. And not because then the level of the current sports records will remain forever unattainable and "the limits of human capabilities in sports" will drop to the already passed stages, but because without doping it will be impossible to manage athletes and entire federations. Then the power over the sports stars will be immediately lost. Selectively fighting them, constantly keeping them in check - that's the beauty!

You can say as much as you like that the current massive attack on Russian athletics stars has no political motives, but I (whatever you want) will never believe that the return right now to their 2009 results took place only because, as we explained, “the consideration of this case was delayed due to the large amount of information and the specificity of cases on the biological passport.

“And I, like the president of the All-Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnichev, do not understand: why did they have to deliver not one, but two loud blows to the prestige of national athletics? If technical questions remained in the last two cases, why was it impossible to wait a week for the announcement of the decision on the walkers and announce them simultaneously with the "case of Tatyana Chernova and Yulia Zaripova"?

IN A CLOSED CIRCLE

I have one more answer to the question: why is this struggle with what will never be eliminated? Did you know that according to the rules of, for example, the International Weightlifting Federation, three positive doping tests per season for weightlifters from one country (or five punctures two years before the Olympic Games) automatically entail the disqualification of the national federation. But if the federation bribes itself (and this is not one tens of thousands of dollars) - it pays, then for God's sake, it can participate, for health, in all competitions. Is this the fight against doping or a win-win way to replenish the Federation's treasury if necessary, since it is not difficult to catch three victims in such a discipline as weightlifting?

By the way, the commercialization of sports, when millions are at stake as prize money in many international competitions, this is another very good reason not to believe that doping will ever be defeated. In each case, you must agree, there are criteria and heights to which one must strive in order to comply. , be among the best. In sports, the highest achievements are, oddly enough, the highest achievements, at the level of which medals are forged. Sometimes only in one competition athletes exceed world records several times (recall, for example, the fantastic struggle in the long jump sector at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, as a result of which the American Robert Beamon flew 8 meters 90 centimeters).

What do you order young people who get into professional sports to do? Should I be guided by the naive motto “the main thing is not victory, but participation”? And the commercialization of sports gave rise to another motto: "Victory at any cost." However, where without her? So it turns out a vicious circle ...

Aren't we ourselves loudly demanding medals from those who are trying on the uniform of the national team, which we are scrupulously counting? We pay big money only for victories, which today cannot be achieved solely on vitamins.

So they achieve, using what everyone (or almost everyone) uses, and then, caught by the so-called anti-doping fighters, lie and twist. Sometimes they look pathetic, but you shouldn't mock at them and, moreover, reproach them. They did not invent this lie ...

This is my personal opinion, nothing more. I don't want to convince anyone of anything. Just shared my thoughts. By the way, the other day I read somewhere the words of Lance Armstrong, disqualified for life, that “he would take doping again if he returned to the nineties”, that “he still feels like a winner of those competitions”.