Sports and Stimulants: A Brief History
The Fascinating History of Stimulants in Sports
Sports writer Norman L. Macht explains the history of stimulants in sports, including quotes from experts and dramatic stories from the past.
Athletes will do what is necessary to win
Imagine a room filled with the world’s top track stars and marathoners. A scientist in a white coat stands before them.
“I am ready to perform my first operation,” he announces, “transplanting the respiratory system of an eagle into a human.
The advanced breathing system of birds is what enables them to make migratory flights of thousands of miles.
A human with such a system would be able to run a mile in three minutes. Of course, we may find it necessary to enlarge the liver also.
And there will be risks. We cannot know what side effects may appear. But think of the prize. Who will be my first volunteer?”
Every hand in the room goes up.
Unlikely? Impossible? Maybe. But such a reaction may not be as improbable as it sounds.
“Athletes are inclined to accept as gospel whatever other athletes or trainers may tell them will improve performance without checking it out,” Dr. Allen J. Ryan, former editor of Physician and Sports Medicine, once said.
David A. Barlow, former co-director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Delaware, recalled watching a professional hockey player spot a half dozen unmarked plastic containers full of pills in a training room.
“He picked them up, looked them over, removed a few lids, sniffed, shrugged, reached a hand into each, pulled out a few pills and swallowed them.
The attitude is: if some guy takes five and says they improved his performance, I’ll take 10 and do better than the other guy.”
The iconic 1908 Olympic Marathon in London
Enhancing performance is nothing new
What they’re taking may be new, but the attitude is as old as herbs and athletes.
“Macedonian soldiers are said to have used a mescaline-like substance obtained from mushrooms,” wrote Dr. Daniel F. Hanley, physician to U.S. Olympic teams from 1960 to 1976.
“A group of Nordic soldiers called the Berserkers used a constituent of a fungus. In the very early Olympic games. the Greeks used certain mushrooms.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the Europeans learned the use of caffeine-containing drugs.”
The list of drugs used by athletes over the years reads like a pharmacology catalogue.
Substances used by Olympic athletes include androgenic anabolic steroids, nicotinyl alcohol tartrate and a dozen other kinds of alkaloids.
But perhaps none is as bizarre as a favorite of bike racers and marathoners of the early 1900s: strychnine, a powerful stimulant to the central nervous system, unless you take too much, in which case it can stimulate you half way to heaven.
According to Black’s Medical Dictionary, strychnine is an alkaloid that makes the heart beat more quickly and more strongly.
“But it is chiefly upon the spinal cord that strychnine acts; all the functions of the cord are more quickly and vigorously carried out, reflex action is increased, the muscles are kept in a state of greater tone . . .”
Typical of its early use was in the marathon event of the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. It was an oppressively hot and humid August day.
The newfangled automobiles that drove ahead of and alongside the runners stirred up a choking cloud of dust. Of the 31 runners who started, 14 finished.
One collapsed eight miles from the finish line with a stomach hemorrhage and almost died on the roadside.
“The trainer was in charge,” said Dr. Hanley. “He drove or biked or trotted alongside the runner and whenever he decided his man needed a kicker, he gave it to him. It was a movable feast.”
Charles J. P. Lucas and Hugh McGrath were the trainers for the winner, T. J. Hicks of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following year Lucas wrote an account of the event.
“[Hicks] managed to keep up well, until seven miles from the stadium, and then the author was forced to administer one-sixtieth grain of sulfate of strychnine by the mouth, besides the white of one egg.
Although French brandy was in the possession of the party, it was deemed best to abstain from further stimulants as long as possible.”
After another mile, Hicks’s color “began to become ashen pale, and then another tablet of one-sixtieth grain strychnine was administered him, and two more eggs, besides a sip of brandy.”
The team ran out of brandy at that point and had to borrow some from another trainer.
With four miles to go, Lucas observed that Hicks “was running the last ounces of strength out of his body, kept in mechanical action by use of drugs . . .”
Hicks became hallucinogenic and ran the last few miles of the race in a mental haze.
Suffering the effects of heat exhaustion, dust-laden air and his trainer’s aids, he dropped exhausted at the finish line.
He was carried indoors where four doctors worked over him until he was able to leave under his own power. He fell asleep on the trolley going to his room.
Concluded Lucas, “The Marathon race, from a medical standpoint, demonstrated that drugs are of much benefit to athletes along the road . . .”
The same conditions and medical aids were considered a factor in the wild finish of the 1908 Olympic marathon in London.
Some previous disputes between American and British officials had led to a strong anti-American sentiment among the spectators.
Once again the heat was unbearable. The race (the first over the now-accepted 26.219 miles distance) began at Windsor Castle and ended with a lap inside the White City Stadium in London.
An Italian, Dorando Pietri, was the first to enter the stadium. But he started the wrong way around the track, then collapsed.
When word reached the stadium at an American, John J. Hayes, was close behind, several British officials helped Pietri to his feet and turned him around.
He staggered a few steps, then fell again. Finally they dragged him over the finish line just as Hayes entered the stadium and, under his own power, finished the race.
The Italian flag was run up the winner’s pole.
But after a bitter wrangle, Pietri was disqualified and Hayes declared the winner.
Pietri, having succumbed to the heat, strychnine and brandy (which was considered a stimulant, but was actually clashing with the effects of the strychnine) lay near death for hours before recovering.
The First Recorded Doping Fatality
The first recorded fatality due to doping (the word comes from the South African “dop” meaning caffeine or alcohol) was reported in 1886.
An English cyclist named Linton died during a race between Paris and Bordeaux, probably from an excessive dose of ephedrine given to him by his coach.
Ephedrine is an alkaloid derived from an Asiatic herb, ma huang, also called Aspera Californica. Chinese physicians had used it for more than 5,000 years.
It dilates coronary vessels and stimulates the central nervous system and respiratory center.
When ephedrine was synthesized in the 1920s it gained in popularity. Prior to that racers had used such wondrous concoctions as sugar cubes dipped in ether and cordials of alcohol and nitroglycerine.
Then amphetamines, steroids and caffeine-based substances became popular. One cyclist died following a race in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, reportedly from large doses of amphetamines and a vasodilator.
Blood Doping
Another method for increasing performance involving no foreign substances is blood doping.
Not illegal, but banned by the Olympics, it can be detected if the number of red blood cells is at least 52 percent above normal. How does it work?
“Blood is taken out of the body some time in advance,” explained David Barlow, “The day before a race it is put back in.
The body meanwhile has replaced what was removed, so this increases both the red cells and blood volume above normal. The result is an increase in the vascular system’s ability to pick up oxygen and use it.
“Theoretically, from a physiological viewpoint, it should work, by increasing the effectiveness of the cardiovascular system to transport oxygen and remove waste from muscles.
There would be no increase in speed but it may aid in retarding the onset of fatigue. Most injuries occur late in a game or race when fatigue has set in.
If something increases resistance to fatigue, it would aid the muscles to function longer.
“On the other hand, a stimulant may take the athlete beyond the point of exhaustion, where the body would normally quit, thus increasing the chance of injury.
“Would I recommend it? No. There would be an increase in blood pressure, with more risk to older athletes, and most runners are on average older than other athletes.
The side and negative effects that may occur, and the unknowns about any individual’s predisposition to certain conditions, make it too dangerous,”
Dr. Ryan agreed, but added, “When told that blood doping was dangerous and might be fatal, more than one athlete has said, ‘I don’t care; if it helps me I want to do it.’
This seems to sum up the attitude of some armies and athletes over the centuries.
In more recent decades major league baseball has had its share of incidents involving players’ use of various modern forms of stimulants, leading to random testing and occasional penalizing of players deemed in violation of the game’s belatedly enacted and enforced rules.
The attitude of most trainers and physicians was summed up a long time ago by the idol of many physicians, Sir William Osler: “The master word in all this is still: work.”
