History of Doping Cases: Pre World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) 1999

Hello everyone

I hope you are all having a good Christmas

I will be doing a series of Doping/Anti - Doping, Gene Doping, Sports Law, Doping Timelines plus more over the next few months.

• History of Doping Cases: Pre World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) 1999
• History of Doping Cases: Post World Anti - Doping Agency (WADA) 1999 - 2017
• Role of World Anti Doping Agency
• Gene Doping
• Doping and Sports Law
• Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs: Characteristics and Functions
• Society Opinions of Sports Doping
• Social Views on Recreational Image and Performance Enhancing Drug (IPED) use

Image sourced from: http://taylorhooton.org/steroids-really-body/ 

If you are interested in reading other articles like this then see the list below which are already posted on my blog;

1/ Review of a all Androgenic Anabolic Steroid Meta Analysis Paper

• http://strengthtrainingforyou.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/a-review-of-androgenic-anabolic-steroid.html

2/ Understanding the Doping Issue

• http://strengthtrainingforyou.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/to-solve-problem-you-must-understand-it.html

3/ Psychological effects of using PED's:

• http://strengthtrainingforyou.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/psychological-effects-of-peds-anabolic.html

4/ Physiological effects of using PED's:

• http://strengthtrainingforyou.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-physiological-effect-of-using-peds.html

Some terminology needs to be explained before we go into this article;

1. Doping (Hackney, 2017) can be defined as the use of a banned chemical compounds (e.g., anabolic steroids) or techniques (e.g., blood doping) to improve sports performance. The substances and practices are called doping agents or just dope (Reardon and Creado, 2014)

2. Performance Enhancing Drugs (Hackney, 2017) or known as PEDs, are substances banned by Anti - Doping agencies such as the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and or National level bodies including UK Anti - Doping (UKAD) or United States Anti - Doping Agency (USADA). Some PEDs, such as the dietary supplement creatine, are not illegal or banned (depending on the country).

3. Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs (IPEDs) (Lifeline, 2016) define IPEDs as substances used to alter or enhance a person's appearance or abilities. The most prominent are Androgenic Anabolic Steroids (AAS), "smart drugs", and skin enhancement drugs (like Botox and or Accutane).  

4. Hormones (Hackney, 2017) are described as chemicals which are naturally produced I the body and serve functions which regulate essential processes such as digestion, metabolism, muscle growth, reproduction and mood control. When hormone levels are raised or lowered artificially to enhance performance this is doping.

5. Anti - Doping can be defined as opposing or prohibiting illegal doping (such as blood doping or the use of anabolic steroids or growth hormones) to improve athletic performance (Merriam-Webster. 2017).

Lets begin

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Doping first appeared in the English Dictionary in 1889. At the time it was described as "opium containing remedy which was used to dope horses, the word dope stemming from the Boer language in South Africa in which dope was an extract with stimulating effects (Mueller, 2010).

To combat doping in sport the World Anti Doping Agency was created in 1999 and its job is to ensure the following for its sports; 

•  CODE COMPLIANCE MONITORING

•  EDUCATION

•  SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

•  ANTI-DOPING COORDINATION

•  GLOBAL ANTI-DOPING DEVELOPMENT

•  ATHLETE OUTREACH

•  COOPERATION WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT

•  OTHER INITIATIVES

WADA Logo from their website

Strange tho...........

It took till 1999 to have a global international anti doping agency.

Think about that. Yet still with all the testing, education, rules, laws and deterrents people are still doping. Just this week Justin Gatlin is back in the news for a potential 3rd doping case, an NFL player (Jeremy Kerley) claims ghosts doped his supplements and Chris Froome under the scope surrounding his use of Asthma medication.

Main reason WADA was created was due to the events of the 1998 Tour De France which one headline described it as;

The 1998 Tour de France: Police raids, arrests, protests... and a bike race

Yet people have been doping (or attempting to doping many years prior to this event).

So the rest of this article will be looking at the timeline of doping and anti - doping pre the creation of WADA (1999). Then I will do another post to do all cases after 1999.

Timeline of Recorded Doping Cases: Pre 1999

1. 776 BC - 393 BC - Ancient Greeks Use Performance Enhancing Drugs

2. 100 AD - Roman Gladiators Use Stimulants and Hallucinogens to Prevent Fatigue and Injury

3. Late 19th Century - French Cyclists and Lacrosse Players Drink Wine and Coca Leaves to fight fatigue and hunger.

4. 1904-1920 - Performance Enhancing Drugs Used in the Modern Olympic Games. In 1904 Olympics marathon runner, Thomas Hicks, was using a mixture of brandy and strychnine [a stimulant that is fatal in high doses] and nearly died.

5. 1940-1945 - Nazis Test Steroids (not proven only speculation)

6. 1940-1950’s - Soldiers Use Amphetamines During and Post WWII

7. Aug. 26, 1960 -  First Athlete to Die in Olympic Competition Due to Doping. Danish cyclist, Knut Jensen, dies on Aug. 26, 1960 at the Summer Olympics in Rome during the 100km team time trial race. His autopsy, however, reveals traces of an amphetamine called Ronicol.

8. July 13, 1967 - Cyclist on Amphetamines Is First Tour de France Doping Death. British cyclist Tommy Simpson, dies during the 13th stage of the Tour de France. The cyclist consumed excess amounts of amphetamines and brandy to combat the effects of an illness.

9. May 4, 1968 - First Horse Disqualified from Kentucky Derby for Banned Substance. Phenylbutazone, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), were found in his urine sample after the race (same drug made legal 4 years later).

10. Oct. 1968 - First Olympic Athlete Disqualified. Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a member of the Swedish modern pentathlon team, was stripped of his bronze medal when he tested positive for excessive alcohol.

11. July. 1972 - Munich Summer Olympic Games. 16 year old American Swimmer, Rick DeMont tested positive for Ephedrine which he was taking routinely for his asthma. After winning the 400m freestyle and poised to win the 1500m he was removed from the 1500m final and stripped of his gold medal from the 400m (this stage of doping and anti doping there was no exemption protocols in place to allow him to compete when using ephedrine).

12. Sep. 27, 1988 - Ben Johnson Stripped of Gold Medal after Positive Drug Test in the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

13. Dec. 2, 1991 - Former East German Swimming Coaches Admit to Two Decades of Doping

14. May 14, 1992 - Former NFL Player Lyle Azado Dies of Brain Cancer after Using Steroids and Human Growth Hormone (HGH) for Two Decades (not proven by doctors that HGH or AAS caused his tumours).

15. Sep.-Oct. 1994 - Chinese Swimmers Fail Drug Tests Three Times More Than Any Other Nation

16. Dec. 15, 1994 - First British (Athletics) Female to Test Positive for PEDs Receives Four Year Ban (Diane Modah)

17. 1998 - Irish Swimmer (Michelle Smith) Suspended for Pouring Whiskey into Urine Sample to Mask Doping.

18. 1998 - Mark McGwire (Baseball Player) Admits to Using a Steroid Precursor

19. Feb. 1998 - Snowboarder Who Tests Positive for Marijuana Has Gold Medal Taken then Returned. Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati

The examples mentioned are just some of the more popular and well known documented cases of doping

Timeline of Recorded Anti - Doping

1. 1928 - First Rule Against Doping in Sports was recorded in the IAAF (athletics)

2. 1967 - International Olympic Commitee (IOC) Establishes Medical Commission to Fight Doping (partly in relation to Tommy Simpsons Death).

3.  Feb. 1968 - First Drug Testing at Olympic Games

4.  1972 - First Full-Scale Drug Testing of Olympic Athletes for Narcotics and Stimulants

5.  1975 - Anabolic Steroids Added to IOC's Banned Substances List

6.  1976 - Steroid Testing Conducted for the First Time at the Montreal Olympics

7.  1983 - Surprise Drug Testing at Pan Am Games Leads Many Athletes to Withdraw from Competition

8.  Nov. 18, 1988 - President Reagan Signs Act Outlawing Non-Medical Steroid Sales

9.  Oct. 5, 1990 - Congress Passes Anabolic Steroids Control Act

10.  June 7, 1991 - Major League Baseball Bans Steroids

11.  Nov. 10, 1999 - World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Is Established

Both these timelines were made with the help of;

1. Hackney, A (2017). Doping, Performance - Enhancing Drugs, and Hormones in Sport. United States of America: Joseph Hayton. p XVI.

2. ProCon.Org. (2013). History of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports. Available: https://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000017. Last accessed 28th November 2017.


It is clear to see the drug testers have always been behind the drug users. For the foreseeable future this will more than likely be the case. Yes modern day testing has caught more people in previous competitions thanks to improvements in their testing protocols yet the amount of people being caught hasn't reduced over time. This is probably down to the fact there are no real deterrents to put athletes off from cheating in sport.

As some of you may have noticed doping dose not just mean taking drugs. An ADRV or Anti - Doping Rule Violation can be under a doping case. There are ten ADRV's which an athlete may break in their career. They are as follows;

ADRV created by WADA from their online Anti - Doping File

Credit to World Anti - Doping Agency (2015) for making this pic really simple guide on the 10 rules for ADRVs.

Even with all the athletes caught or medals returned through better testing over the years (pre 1999 still) there still was controversy in sport. Best example was the 100m event in the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games in South Korea. An event which was heavily political in nature as USA had invested a lot of money into it (so had a lot of sway over officials some may argue). It was another East v West, Communist V Capitalism and indirectly USA v USSR (now known as Russia).

Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson won the race but had his medal stripped after testing positive for an anabolic steroid. The medal was given over to Carl Lewis from the USA. However, he wasn't meant to be at the games as he had tested positive for a stimulant which he shouldn't of been allowed to compete. Yet the USA Olympic Committee let him and covered up 5 other American athletes who tested positive at the games. Hearing for the 100m final was held in USA congress and Carl testified against Ben to secure his gold medal.

And people say politics is never in sport.

Ben admits he cheated but not with what they accused him of. Video from the film "Bigger Stronger Faster" has both athletes talk about the incident. Start video from 37:00 - 38:50 explains it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWpxRa3wRm8&t=2272s

Picture below shows since that infamous race nearly all competitors who took part have been done for some form of ADRV.

Imaged Credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2182781/London-Olympics-2012-Recalling-100m-mens-final-Seoul--dirtiest-race-history.html

So by reading the above doping was very prevalent before WADA stepped in, in 1999. Next post will be looking to Doping post 1999 to end of 2017.
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Thank you for reading :) 

Reference List

1. Hackney, A (2017). Doping, Performance - Enhancing Drugs, and Hormones in Sport. United States of America: Joseph Hayton. p XVI. 

2. Lifeline Project (2016). Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs (IPEDs) Literature Review. Available: http://www.lifeline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Lifeline-IPEDsReport-November2016.pdf. Last accessed 27th November 2017.

3. Reardon, C.L. and Creado, S., (2014). Drug abuse in athletes. Substance abuse and rehabilitation, 5, p.95.

4. Merriam - Webster . (2017). Definition of Anti Doping . Available: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-doping. Last accessed 27th November 2017.

5. Müller, R.K., 2010. History of doping and doping control. In Doping in Sports: Biochemical Principles, Effects and Analysis (pp. 1-23). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

6. World Anti Doping Agency . (2015). AT-A-GLANCE - ABOUT ANTI-DOPING. Available: https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/wada_anti-doping_aag_eng_web.pdf. Last accessed 27th November 2017.

Andrew Richardson, Founder of Strength is Never a Weakness Blog

I have a BSc (Hons) in Applied Sport Science and a Merit in my MSc in Sport and Exercise Science and I passed my PGCE at Teesside University. 

Now I will be commencing my PhD into "Investigating Sedentary Lifestyles of the Tees Valley" this October 2019. 

I am employed by Teesside University Sport and WellBeing Department as a PT/Fitness Instructor.  

My long term goal is to become a Sport Science and/or Sport and Exercise Lecturer. I am also keen to contribute to academia via continued research in a quest for new knowledge.

My most recent publications: 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1752928X19300216

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1752928X19301076 

My passion is for Sport Science which has led to additional interests incorporating Sports Psychology, Body Dysmorphia, AAS, Doping and Strength and Conditioning. 

Within these respective fields, I have a passion for Strength Training, Fitness Testing, Periodisation and Tapering. 

I write for numerous websites across the UK and Ireland including my own blog Strength is Never a Weakness. 

I had my own business for providing training plans for teams and athletes. 

I was one of the Irish National Coaches for Powerlifting, and have attained two 3rd places at the first World University Championships, 

in Belarus in July 2016.Feel free to email me or call me as I am always looking for the next challenge. 

Contact details below; 

Facebook: Andrew Richardson (search for)

Facebook Page: @StrengthisNeveraWeakness

Twitter: @arichie17 

Instagram: @arichiepowerlifting

Snapchat: @andypowerlifter 

Email: a.s.richardson@tees.ac.uk

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-richardson-b0039278 

Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew_Richardson7