As the sports world is still reeling from the Lance Armstrong scandal, officials are claiming that cycling is just the tip of the iceberg. Inside experts insist that while the drugs involved may vary, every sport is at risk for misuse. Fortunately the recent scandal can bring about some good by forcing each governing body to take a hard look at what is really going on inside their particular sport.
What some may not realize is that the practice of doping in sports dates back hundreds of years. Early athletes used everything from roots and leaves to dangerous substances like nitroglycerin and cocaine to improve their endurance. It was John Ziegler, a physician for the US weightlifting team, who is credited with introducing steroids in the mid-20th century.
Ziegler took a cue from the Soviet teams’ supposed success with performance-enhancing drugs and worked with the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company to develop an oral anabolic steroid. This resulted in the creation of methandrostenolone which appeared on the market in 1960. During the Olympics that year a Danish cyclist collapsed and died while competing. An autopsy later revealed the presence of amphetamines and a drug called nicotinyl tartrate in his system.
Today doping has become much more sophisticated, but it’s just as deadly. If the health of the athletes isn’t motivation enough to make changes, money might be. Millions in sponsorship dollars were lost in the wake of Armstrong being stripped of his Tour de France titles, and teams are now scrambling to find sponsors.
Some point fingers at sports’ governing bodies, insisting that with a problem so pervasive, there is no way they could have been completely in the dark. Others insist that with titles being revoked for drug offenses, the system IS working. Amid all the ugliness the route for the 2013 Tour de France was recently announced in Paris. It will be the 100th edition of the grueling race.
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