The Future of Athleticism
In July 2005, Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France victory, the most famous cycling tournament of them all, cementing his status as one of the greatest cyclists of all time. Seven years later, Armstrong was accused of doping and drug trafficking by the USADA, and in a heartbreaking moment, was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France medals, and banned from further competitions. Cases of famous athletes using performance enhancing drugs is nothing new to sports; in fact, many consider the so called “steroid era” of sports to be between the late 80’s to mid 2000’s, including athletes such as Sun Yang, Ben Johnson, and Marion Jones.
As the steroid era comes to a close, many scientists consider the possibilities for the future of athleticism. While steroids are still illegally used in many sports, other methods are becoming more obscure, being able to hide from the various ways sporting leagues use to catch athletes using performance enhancing drugs (PED). Before diving into the possibilities for the future, it’s important to take a look at the past, such as how drugs were first used in the world of sports, and what methods early sporting leagues had of catching these players.
Early Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports
The use of other substances to gain a favorable advantage over an opponent dates back to ancient times, where athletes would eat special diets or drink special “potions”, with the belief that it would enhance their performance. The first documented use of PED was in Dutch swimmers used stimulants in 1865 to improve their swimming performances. In the late 19th century, European cyclists were using a range of drugs, from caffeine to ether-coated sugar cubes, and cocaine-laced wine, in order to alleviate the pain and exhaustion resulting from their sport. The early 1900s saw little steroid usage, likely due to the increasing number of athletic deaths from riskier PED’s like strychnine, steering many away from the drug. However, this would change during WWII, where Anabolic Steroids, the most common type of PED used today and in the late 20th century, was developed by Nazi soldiers to make their soldiers more aggressive. In the aftermath of WWII and during the Cold War, both the US and USSR were in a race to prove which economic system was superior, and one way to do this was through global sports competition such as the olympics. Because of this, both global superpowers developed and introduced anabolic steroids and other PED’s to their athletes, to such a point where drugs were being used in virtually every sport, from football to weightlifters to track and field.
Attempts to Counter Drug Usage
Efforts against doping are relatively modern, with the first attempt to ban it being the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) in 1928. IAAF banned the use of stimulating substances and doping. While other international sports federations followed suit, the bans were pretty ineffective because there were no tests that were able to detect the use of drugs at the time. It wasn’t until the death of a Danish cyclist, Knut Jensen, that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) got involved, introducing a primitive form of stimulant testing, with FIFA among the earliest sports federations to implement doping tests in their championships. In the 1971 the IOC medical commission declared the first list of banned substances, and in 1976, Anabolic Steroids were finally banned when a reliable test to detect them came out. Even with all these tests, doping and the use of anabolic steroids would continue, with East Germany pumping their athletes full of steroids during the 1976 Olympics, and individual doping scandals like that of Ben Johnson and Lance Armstrong.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, doping in sports is a very real problem that continues to this day. The IOC’s double pronged tactic of both punishment for cheating, and education of athletes as to the risks has widely been unsuccessful, with newer, more undetectable steroids being used today. Professional athletes often serve as role models to younger population, so this poses a risk to juvenile athletes who see their idols doping and abusing drugs. The next section will discuss the potential future of drug usage in sports, and the newer technology that can possibly resolve this age-old problem.
